Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit | Hacker News Reader

Career advice no one gave me: Give a lot of notice when you quit

davidlaprade.github.io

248 pointsuser052919392 comments

I've generally given a lot of notice as an IC, 2-3 months in some cases. and I have to say, I think it's not been appreciated, not even once. I've tried to spend the time wrapping things up, communicating my tacit knowledge to my coworkers, and writing documentation for things that I've done and created and am responsible for; I'm fairly certain that no one has given my opinions and thoughts any more than a cursory amount of attention.

Now, I absolutely loathe the modern corporate culture, which is happy to escort you out of the building the moment your employment is terminated, without giving you a chance to even say goodbye to your colleagues, who you might have been working with extensively for years. It's deeply traumatic and it contributes to an overall sense of fear and "screw teamwork, it's everyone for themselves".

But now when I "give notice" and they don't even let me try to work the next 2 weeks, I'm grateful. I don't want my coworkers to ignore or patronize me while I sit idle or do make-work. I don't want to have to put on a show about how wonderful the company and team are, and why I'm leaving anyways. Nor do I want to expose my true feelings to my co-workers and infect them with my bad attitude--even if the writing is on the wall for the entire enterprise. It's like a breakup: the best thing for everyone is to make it clean and crisp, say "it's not you, it's me", make a sincere statement to the effect of "let's be friends", and then see each other roughly never again.

I completely agree. I've been asked to stay on an extra week or two and I think it was a terrible decision. Nobody really cared or paid attention in hand off meetings (I'd like to think careful documentation was later appreciated when someone had to take those things on later) and I was interested in moving on.

I completely agree. The part about infecting people with my attitude is especially relevant. It's normal that we talk. And when they ask "why?", it feels awkward. If I tell them all the reasons, it will influence their perception of their situation (which might be quite positive) and I prefer not to do that. But if I avoid answering, I will be perceived as dishonest or hiding something. So usually I invent some excuse so that nobody feels bad.

> But if I avoid answering, I will be perceived as dishonest or hiding something. So usually I invent some excuse so that nobody feels bad.

So you avoid the perception of being dishonest and hiding something by actually being dishonest and hiding something?

You don't need to lie. There are plenty of generic reasons you can give why you're leaving that probably even have the virtue of having some truth to them. (Was time to make a change.) No reason to get into a blow-by-blow of why now and what all the things that made the situation less and less tolerable were.

It's not lying. It just not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

ADDED: Companies can also obviously be in a place where at least some of your reasons are so blindingly obvious they don't need to be stated.

This is the way. You can be honest, and authentic, without running down the company or your coworkers.

“Love it here, just looking for a new challenge” or “Love it here, but I couldn’t pass this opportunity up” have gotten me far. You can always be more honest behind closed doors if you want.

I'm impressed (and a bit envious) you were able to say that first part. I wish I'd worked at place where I could honestly say the same.

Every place I've left, the best I could muster with a straight face was a bland tautological platitude — something like, "Oh, you know, just going to do something different."

I don't exactly have tons of experience quitting jobs or ending relationships, but I've never understood the relentless navel-gazing of "why" that seems to come along with most people quitting their jobs. And, besides, what's the point of expounding on how things could be better (in an "exit interview" or otherwise), when everyone knows all that feedback will have no impact?

It seems to me the practical part of the conversation is simply, "I'm ending our relationship." And then — everyone moves forward from there.

It's mostly just a ritual. After you've gotten past whatever pressures and inducements your management offers (or not) for you to stay, the exit interview is you pretending to seriously answer the "why" and HR pretending to care.

> And, besides, what's the point of expounding on how things could be better (in an "exit interview" or otherwise), when everyone knows all that feedback will have no impact?

Many employers do listen to exit interview feedback, and if themes are consistent, changes do get made. Have seen it happen more than once, although it usually takes multiple departures or the loss of a key person.

Of course not all employers are like this, but if you‘re willing to give yours the benefit of the doubt, it can be worth paying it forward to your colleagues by giving your feedback in a professional way.

> Many employers do listen to exit interview feedback, and if themes are consistent, changes do get made. Have seen it happen more than once, although it usually takes multiple departures or the loss of a key person.

My anecdata seems to confirm this. I told my employer I love my job but I'm leaving solely because of their RTO policies. They changed them after I left.

It is still not the truth. I am not saying you are obliged to say the truth if the is unsafe or if no one will listen. But lets not pretend this is actually honest communication. It is not.

I once shared an office with someone in order to take on their work because they were retiring early. I got/had to hear about all of their gripes with our employer and within six months I was in complete agreement with them :)

> And when they ask "why?", it feels awkward. If I tell them all the reasons, it will influence their perception of their situation (which might be quite positive)

I find this on itself to be a dysfunction. In well functioning team, they would be able to guess, because they would know your general opinions. And their positive opinions would be known too.

As in, this happens only because the communication within the team or within the corporation is dysfunctional and people dont talk in the first place.

Just lie, but you don't normally have to really lie. Is there ever one single reason for leaving? You don't have to tell them the worst version of your decision.

Like most things, it depends. I've given employers no time up to 4 weeks. Smaller ones will definitely receive more grace if they have been good to me. And, when I was an employer I tried to do the same for others.

Another note is that I'm always succession planning. Document, share what I'm doing, etc... I learned early on that if I couldn't be replaced, I also couldn't be promoted.

not a lot of companies seem to recognize this pattern and encourage it.

benefit from it, sure.

> I learned early on that if I couldn't be replaced, I also couldn't be promoted.

Nailed this on the head.

At the same time, the extra work this requires is often not appreciated by management either - I've seen some (admittedly poor) managers comment on lower productivity due to the documentation efforts.

It may not be appreciated by management in terms of someone saying “wow, your documentation was incredible, here’s that raise/promotion.” But the people who interact with your documentation will appreciate it, which raises your stature in the organization long term.

And management priorities change over time, it’s not uncommon for companies to emphasize documentation more as they mature.

> I learned early on that if I couldn't be replaced, I also couldn't be promoted.

Even as someone who has zero interest in being promoted, I think this is good practice. It's part of helping to maintain a healthy organization. If anyone is actually indispensable, that's a very dangerous situation for the team and the company.

I’m doing wrap up now, and I’ve only just started job hunting. You don’t have to tell them that’s what you’re doing.

> But now when I "give notice" and they don't even let me try to work the next 2 weeks, I'm grateful.

Life hack: Put your resignation in writing with a date in the future. In many states, if the employer attempts to move the termination date (without compensation), they will award wages until your resignation date... I've used this twice, and in both cases, I was sent home, but HR told the manager that any severance would start after my resignation date which in one case led to a really awkward call when my manager tried to get me to come back for a month after having me pack up my desk and leave.

I don’t know they’d have to award you wages, but the only alternative to that would be firing you. Some might try to do that out of spite but it would be far worse for them than you.

They'd usually have to prove they fired you with cause not because you said you quit.

i.e. if you get caught stealing or are sexually harassing your co-workers, they can still fire you. They are not however required to let you work. They can revoke access and continue to pay, they can give you a package and terminate you employment. If you don't want to take the package, they can just walk you out of the building and terminate your employment two weeks later.

I’d guess most people, in the US at least, are employed at-will and could be fired right on the spot with no cause given. The problem with that though is you could turn around and file for unemployment which might end up increasing the associated taxes for them with increased headaches.

I’d agree that most reasonable HR departments wouldn’t let it go that far but some people like to play dirty irrespective of the costs.

If you put in 2 weeks notice and you get fired on the spot its a slam dunk un employment claim. (assuming you can show that yes you gave notice and you weren't fired first) Most places would rather just pay you the 2 weeks if they really dont want you around than deal with unemployment. Lots of corporate environments firing people takes more than 2 weeks anyways, and you would just be creating extra work for HR for what would seem like no reason.

Unemployment is like $350 - $550/week.

Unemployment in the US is set at the state level.

Many states pay significantly higher than $550. WA pays a max of $999 weekly.

Yeah. Last time I looked, MA was like $1k. Just across the border, NH was more like $400. Not a fortune and doesn’t start until vacation payout is done I believe but not nothing for most. You do need to at least go through some motions of job hunting.

Vacation payouts shouldn't be relevant. They are earned while working, so they are compensation from the period when you worked.

Unless, of course, you are trying to collect during a period that is scheduled as a vacation? That could create problems.

Can you explain what you mean by "slam dunk un employment claim"? Do you mean you'd be able to get unemployment benefits (which come from the state, not your company)? Or do you mean you'd have a claim against the company?

As a former lawyer (US-based), my sense is the first is true, and the second is not. As long as they're not canning you for being in a protected class, they can fire at-will employees whenever they want.

Yes, but you generally can't get unemployment for quitting. You have to get laid off or fired by the company to be eligible for unemployment benefits. It's especially easy to get benefits if you were fired without cause. There's no legal protection in cause/or no cause, but it will be the difference between an easy unemployment claim and a contested one.

Most employers get their unemployment insurance rate set by the number of people that require the service just like any other insurance. When an employee can prove they quit (probably before you started 'performance managing' for a with cause termination), then it makes it much simpler to just let them leave then to do the paperwork, eat the unemployment insurance adjustment, risk a possible 'wrongful termination' lawsuit (regardless of merit or ability to win).

Transferring their work and letting them dick around for a week is going to be considerably less work and risk then terminating them before the date. So as a general rule, when you give advance notice, in writing, there is a very good chance that they'll just let you leave on the day.

Additionally, if you fire everyone immediately when they give notice, then people stop giving notice all together, so you just come in some days and are a person short.

How can it increase taxes? Unemployment is funded by payroll taxes that are fixed and non-negotiable.

The short answer is that unemployment claims increase the amount a company has to pay in during future years. https://unemployment-services.com/unemployment-claim-cost-em...

This is partially correct. FUTA is a federal payroll tax that in part funds unemployment insurance and is fixed and a pretty small amount. The other part, SUTA (State Unemployment TAx) is usually only fixed in the first few years of a business' existance, and then is annually adjusted by a bunch of factors including industry, unemployment claims, completeness of employer reporting and penalties for outstanding assessments. In practice, too many claims can land an employer in a situation where SUTA can go up substantially. In my state, SUTA ranges between .2% and 5.4% (of pay), so unemployment claims can be quite expensive if they result in an increase in SUTA.

Dumb question: why would you get severance if you resigned?

Because of resigned effective of a future date. Any termination of employment before then is either a with-cause firing or a layoff where severance is required.

Seems like an interesting idea. Give as much notice as possible and then see if they bench you until then.

> Any termination of employment before then is either a with-cause firing or a layoff where severance is required.

If they're paying you until that future resignation date, it's not a firing or a layoff, is it? The part that your employer is responsible for is your salary, not providing you with things to do.

I people usually don't keep getting paid after a "termination of employment"

I would definitely want to talk to an employment lawyer familiar with the laws of the local jurisdiction before making any assumptions.

Severance is often paid (in at-will employment jurisdictions) just as a way to get the departing employee to sign a document agreeing not to sue, and possibly agreeing not to disparage.

I'm not an employment lawyer (but am a former lawyer), and I would think that if someone said they were going to quit way in the future, and was then fired, they would have a pretty poor case if they tried to sue. The company would credibly claim that it was not based on impermissible discrimination or retaliation, but was just because they assumed the employee would massively slack off.

There's also the question of damages — if you were about to quit anyway, then your damages would be relatively small because it would only be the salary that would have been paid between the time you were escorted out and the time you planned to leave. It could be $100k if you're very well-paid, but that pales in comparison to what you would get in a discrimination lawsuit (which is what severance agreements are seeking to avoid).

It would also be relatively difficult to find a lawyer who would take a case with a relatively small amount on the table, and an uphill battle in terms of proof.

For the right to call me about past business, and a guarantee I will help.

> Life hack: Put your resignation in writing with a date in the future.

This sounds like such a neat way to deal with it. I wonder if it's legally valid in my jurisdiction (in Sweden.) I have never heard of it but yet again, why not?

I always do that, draft the email to my boss and hr, walk into my bosses office, send the email saying:

"I will be ending my employment with ${company} effective ${two_weeks_from_now}. I'm giving ${X} weeks notice to afford ${company} the opportunity to transition my work and knowledge to other employees as they see fit. I appreciate the opportunity ${company} has given me and wish you all the best as you continue to advance ${company mission}"

Then I say, "I'm quitting, my last day will be in ${two_weeks_from_now}" and there's already a record of how that conversation came about. No one's going to walk out and say they fired you and you're pretending to quit or strange shit like that.

Termination dates are in the employment contract 99.9% in Sweden. At most you’ll get a “lmao, no”.

Notice periods are, as far as I know and in my experience, the _minimum_ number of weeks or months to give notice. Nothing is stopping you from giving notice earlier.

The question is can an employer truncate it?

It seems like you could really harm a company by forcing them to pay you to nothing if because they don't want to start someone on a project they will definitely leave half way through.

If you continue fulfilling your responsibilities as an employee, I don't see why. If a longer planning horizon is needed, a longer notice period is the answer.

No it’s not valid in Sweden (or anywhere else). The date at which your resignation starts to count is the date that your employer learns of your intent to leave. You are however free to agree on an arbitrary date with them as your last day.

It’s not the date you put in the letterhead. That would be insane.

I think that's not what was meant. You _can_ hand in your notice earlier than contractually necessary. If your notice period was 2 months, and you let your employer know, that you are quitting in 3 months, that's perfectly legal. Its not changing the date of the document, it's about the date of your intended departure you mention within it.

> It’s not the date you put in the letterhead. That would be insane.

Clarification: I put in the body of the letter the effective date I will be leaving. Something like:

"My final day will be December 12, 2018."

The date in the letterhead has nothing to do with it.

If you're really mistrusting of your employer, you may not want to give them proof you notified them earlier.

If that was the motivation, you would need to not notify them earlier. Simple as that.

> No it’s not valid in Sweden (or anywhere else). The date at which your resignation starts to count is the date that your employer learns of your intent to leave.

"or anywhere else" is an exceedingly broad assertion. For Canada:

> Yes, you do have to give notice of your resignation in Canada. The common law imposes a duty to provide notice of resignation on all employees.

> However, you don’t have to give two weeks’ notice of your resignation in Canada per se. Rather, you have to give a “reasonable” amount of notice of your resignation, which may be more or less than two weeks’ notice. The amount of reasonable notice an employee has to give will depend on their specific circumstances, as discussed below.

> The obligation to give reasonable notice is a general common law obligation of all employees. In Sure-Grip Fasteners Ltd. v. Allgrade Bolt & Chain Inc., [1993] 45 C.C.E.L. 276 (Ont. Gen. Div.) at pages 281-282, Justice Chapnik found: […]

* https://duttonlaw.ca/do-you-have-to-give-two-weeks-notice-in...

During the 'notice period' you still have a job, though the employer may tell you to simply stay at home (and rescind access, etc).

Can you give 10 years notice and if you get fired within 10 years they would be forced to pay out 10 years?

“Reasonable”

The context of the grandparent comment implies that they date their letter of resignation as being submitted in the future.

This isn’t accurate, might have worked in one-off situations but, given at-will employment, this was at best a confused HR employee trying to help, not a legal conclusion. Note the obvious edge cases

> given at-will employment, this was at best a confused HR employee trying to help

US centric advice: Most states will automatically award unemployment to the employee if they are termed before the resignation date. In some cases, a dated resignation when combined with an email chain about "how to get rid of them" it will turn into a genuine legal risk. Most US HR people will advise to just respect a reasonable resign date or offer a severance agreement to avoid risk. Source: aside doing it myself with a couple of employers, since then I've owned four companies and dealt with the aftermath from managers who think they are smarter than HR.

If it works, you win $$: why be so negative? Maybe some downsides if they make you work longer, but that is a judgement call to make depending on context.

Factually it worked twice for them, versus your theories that it shouldn’t work.

Comments are packed full of 'em, downside of preannouncing you're quitting months from now is you get 0

In the U.S., an employee that resigns is not entitled to severance. In this case, you would only have received severance if you had been terminated before your resignation date. If they sent you home but continued to pay you for that month, you would not have been entitled to severance.

This is correct, unless there's a reason why they should... and if they are smart, the severance will include setting the term date to the severance date.

I don't understand your comment. The only circumstances in which a resigning employee is entitled to severance is if they have an employment contract entitling then to severance in the event of a voluntary departure.

Even executives don't get that. A run of the mill employee definitely won't.

What state is this? This would only apply here if you already had a contract for a fixed term. Most employment here is at will and so this won't work.

Everyone else: please talk to a lawyer in your state familiar with employment law before banking on this.

Isn't that just normal? How do people normally resign? I've always written up a letter saying my last day will be x

Probably not as you will just make it worse by letting them fire you. Which makes for an awkward reference call later.

I've never given less than a month's notice, and the notice has always been tied to the end date of whatever project or current workload I happen to have. My direct bosses have always expressed appreciation for this, but then again, I've only ever left a company once because I was dissatisfied working there.

Culture and relationships are a two way street, and you are always responsible for your own part in building it. You might have a shit boss or work for a shit company and it's not going to end well, and if that's the case and there's nothing you can do, then all that's left is to look out for yourself. I wouldn't ever advocate for that to be the default position, though.

Question: Are you in Europe? I get the feeling this sort of thing is much more common there (or at least "not the US")

Maybe not. I'm in the US and this is generally my practice as well. Unless I'm dying to get out or have other circumstances encouraging a quick exit, I offer a month at least. Sometimes more.

Nope, midwest US. Two weeks notice is social etiquette as a minimum to avoid burning a bridge, so to speak. There's nothing against giving further notice.

Thinking back on it, though, I would absolutely not give further notice if I was only doing "busy" work (as someone suggested elsewhere). I try to maintain a good relationship with my employers as a professional courtesy. Putting out notice beyond what active work I have would, I think, send a signal that I'm looking to collect an easy pay check and disconnect. Lining up my resignation with my active work sends a message that I am still invested in contributing to my team's success, and that's a good way to have people be more than happy to give you referrals or networking opportunities in the future.

That's interesting. In my experience, I've somehow managed to score referrals despite daring to give less than 2 weeks notice and my previous bosses still recognize my investment in the company's success. It's rather amusing that the midwest isn't more forgiving when it comes to shorter notices, or that an employee is instantly branded as a "bridge-burner".

> midwest isn't more forgiving

As with all social etiquette, it's a guideline, not a law. The outcome depends entirely on your relationship with your boss and what kind of position the team is left in when you leave.

Don't you have it defined in your contract typically? It is in the UK. Two weeks is about the minimum it'd be for a professional job, often more with seniority or time at a company (i.e. contact will say +1 week for every two years or whatever).

Most employment positions in the US are at-will, meaning either party is legally allowed to terminate at any point for no reason given, barring legal protections against discussion and retaliation.

It's different if you're a contractor (i.e. not an employee but hired for a specific contractor term) or in a union (not an issue for most software engineers). My experience with both is indirect.

Not the parent, but I have always given long notice periods in the US. Typically 3-4 weeks.

In all cases, they have been appreciated, and it gave me the opportunity to wrap up projects.

In several cases(the previous three jobs), I have been retained in a 1099 capacity at rates that far exceed my salary(3-5x) for consulting on projects and ongoing expertise of archaic systems. Typically that arrangement winds down to very little work after the first year.

In all of these scenarios, my manager was aware I was looking for months before I put in my notice. My reason for moving is a combination of environment(outgrown the scale of the company, or looking to relocate) and pay.

> and I have to say, I think it's not been appreciated, not even once.

This mirrors my experience, but for one time where my manager had been a friend for some years prior to me reporting to him.

Totally agree. Two weeks for knowledge transfer should be it. Remember that most leadership view all engineers as replaceable cogs. Just wrap up what you can and loop others into the things that can't and move on with life. Big companies probably don't want you around from a liability. Small companies want the knowledge transfer because you have "blind-sided" them. (Despite asking for a raise for the last two years and told no chance.)

My experience is that two weeks is probably about right most of the time--especially for ICs. The company expects it as the norm. And it's either enough time to do a reasonable handoff or no sensible length of time is going to be enough. (And I'll always answer the odd "help!" question for the coming month or two.) Go much beyond that and you're in this odd extended winding down situation where you can't really take anything new on and you're increasingly checked out. And, in a physical office environment, you're probably also increasingly just a distraction.

I gave 6 weeks on my last one to a fanng, Never again. That was when the project I was working on was slated to finish, and I continued working on it until then. I but it was a bit unexpected for me and I had a 4 day weekend scheduled to take my kids on a school trip.

Came back on Monday, incompetent fuckers had locked me out and terminated me as a no call no show. lol, uh, it's in the fucking time off tool you fucks. The thing that really sucked was that I was a high preforming employee, I canceled a promotion review to give notice. 7 years in and some jerkoff needs your seat and 6 weeks isn't appreciated. The got me reconnected after a couple days and then my manager never talked to me again. that was a long three weeks there at the end.

Yep this is more like the real word experience. Never be "nice" to companies, they don't give a shit about you. I'm not even bitter or anything like that is just the reality. Your coworkers will forget about you in a week. Work is transitional, don't make it your life.

One time I gave 4 week notice and my lead HR person (~2000 person company) who I have never spoke to before called me very upset and yelled at me for several minutes about how rude I was being by doing 4 weeks instead of 2.

Something I realized. After you give notice, at most, the business needs about a week to decide what to do with the work you were handling. In tech, most projects can be deferred, and most services can go into KTLO.

After the week is done to figure that stuff out - no one really cares about you anymore. There is likewise a tacit assumption that you won’t deliver anything again (why would you?). As such it’s usually best to let someone out the door after a week.

Typically when I give notice, I simply state that the employer can do whatever over the next 2 weeks. 70% of the time, when given the choice, they will decide on a fast transition of 1 week. There hardly is anything to do the second week.

On the day I give notice, there is a bit if a shock and a "what are we gonna do now?" attitude. On the second day, word has got around and everyone wants to know where you're going, etc. On the third day, i brief whoever will take over my job. On the fourth day I am no longer invited to meetings or really have anything to do for the next several days until I leave.

In practice, even two weeks is more than enough for your role to be taken over by someone. I really see little value in giving more notice that that for either the employer or employee.

After you give notice, at most, the business needs about a week to decide what to do with the work you were handling. In tech, most projects can be deferred, and most services can go into KTLO.

Ideally, sure. In real life the employee needs to do a brain dump of handover documents because no one writes anything down.

does anyone ever read those braindumps?

Not top to bottom like a doc, but having it means you can include it in a search when you don't know something. That often proves useful.

> I've generally given a lot of notice as an IC, 2-3 months in some cases. and I have to say, I think it's not been appreciated, not even once.

I personally think it's the right thing to do, not for the company, but for your colleagues. If staying longer can help your colleagues to take over your stuff, some will be grateful and will remember it if your paths cross again.

IDK. All my colleagues leave after 2-3 weeks, sometimes less. It's just how things are done. My last employer moved my end date so the could claw back several hundred to a thousand off my last pay check, after I stayed a bit longer.

I know now I might have been able to fight this, and may have done that knowing what I know now. On the other hand it might not be worth the effort.

If you're wondering how, I think I didn't "earn" vacation until the end of the month, and was technically using "borrowed vacation". I stayed with that company for 7 years... I can't think of any other reason for them to end my employment two days early, right before the end of the month.

> I absolutely loathe the modern corporate culture[...]

If you've been on the other side of that - having employees sabotage or steal in the process of leaving - you'd at least understand it. Not many people do that, but it's always the bad apples who ruin it for everybody.

I gave several months notice one time. They didn't use any of the time to onboard someone else, and afterwards talked about how I left them high and dry.

From now on I'm giving 2 weeks and getting the fuck out of there.

Yeah exactly. The experiences around me agree with you: once someone is "out" most managers will look to "eliminate" that person from the group ASAP. I've even seen someone being asked not to come in from tomorrow, which shocked everyone since that person was well liked, a good performer - even had multiple patents associated with him. It was just a power trip from that manager.

This is terrible advice. Great that it has worked for the author but it does not mean it's a good idea for everyone. 2 weeks is the standard and as long as you give that you maintain good relations. Most people are not as valuable or important as they like to think they are. I have seen very important people leave / fired and things still go on. (Twitter is still working - isn't it?) Once you tell that you are leaving, everybody's attitude towards you changes. You want to minimize that awkward period. There's nothing to be gained by staying longer than 2 weeks. If you have stock vesting, wait until stock vests before giving 2 weeks notice.

It's so bad it feels like straight up management propaganda

Two weeks is all most recruiters have ever offered me, and some did so begrudgingly. Which is weird because if I say yes that actually makes me a worse hire.

Recruiters don’t like people who want >2 weeks because it adds risk that you will renege on the deal, which means they lose out on their payday. But the recruiter isn’t the other party in the negotiation, the hiring manager is.

So don’t negotiate start date until you have an offer and are talking to the hiring manager. Save it to the end and you can say “well, I’m still not 100% sure about this offer, but I think this would work if you could push my start date out a bit…”

Interesting, I was able to get a couple months when I switched jobs a while back. I think recruiters probably figure the longer the window, the more chance you go do something else instead.

In my experience it's really situational and depends on the relationship with co-workers more than managers. I've given as much as a month at places I liked and where knowledge transfer will be useful to those who will pick up my slack. Others, I simply said "I'm done" and spent the remaining days posting GIFs and XKCDs on Slack

Yep, everyone is replaceable. 2 weeks should be enough. What's the use in staying more? Anyone who wants to get KT by then should be able to get it.

There’s a lot of merit to taking a week or two beyond the standard. 2 weeks isn‘t a lot of time to hand off all your work, go through the usual HR bureaucracy, and make sure you have contact info for anyone you might want to stay in touch with after leaving.

If it’s an amicable departure 3-4 weeks can be a lot less stressful for everyone.

6-8 weeks is kinda weird though, unless you‘re extremely senior and on critical path for a lot of things, or you‘re using up accrued PTO.

> 6-8 weeks is kinda weird though, unless you‘re extremely senior and on critical path for a lot of things, or you‘re using up accrued PTO.

If you're a leader in a team, definitely give more notice. It's the professional thing to do. Something that the post -doesn't- say is that you should have a transition plan written down before you tell your boss, just in case you get cut off.

Of course they can still summarily kick you out the door, but it's a chance for you as a leader to do right by the team.

And 2 weeks could suddenly become a lot shorter. I gave 2 weeks notice once, then had a death in the family (covered by bereavement leave) and then got sick. My 10 business days of handover ended up going down to about 4-5.

I have resigned for two different jobs where I was the highest tech leader, reporting to the CEO (basically CTO role without the title). Both times I gave 1 month of notice. Both times all the "transition" work was done during the first 2 weeks, and afterwards, I basically sat at meeting listening without say (I pushed for my "replacement" to be the one making the decisions as if I wasn't there) and even the CEO asked me to stay at home in one of the two jobs.

My thought is that if that worked for me for 2 weeks, it should also be more than enough for an IC.

I don't know. Not to offend you but in general I consider leadership roles to be more easily replaceable than IC ones. Fundamentally, it's the ICs that usually have all the intricate knowledge of the details. That is something I'd argue cannot be handed over in just two weeks, in particular to just anyone.

On the other hand, the leadership folks I interact with always make only super high level decisions. Rarely does it get intricate. It's more important to know how to quickly assess the big picture and how to communicate. All lot of what a leader does and makes them uniquely leaders is not something that's based on acquiring company specific and product and infra specific knowledge accumulated across several years.

I rarely care if my manager leaves beyond the fact that I have to build trust with someone new. But ultimately they aren't super in the weeds on anything mission critical.

An engineer that can jump into an incident and immediately identify the problem on a code path because they have worked on it or around it intimately at some point does make a difference, but also just having a detailed mental model of how the system pieces interact is super crucial. Bus factor is a thing, even though it rarely is catastrophic. Lead time can help here.

Of course leaders leaving also is a challenge, but it's because of their unique charm, ability to grasp issues quickly and make sane decisions. But none of this can be transferred to a new guy, in 2 or 4 weeks or 8.

It is terrible advice and especially if you are an at-will employee. 2 weeks is fine, but as others have mentioned, most of the time you get put into a hermetically sealed jar once you give notice.

No, no, no, no a billion times no to this absolutely not no

The moment you give your resignation, there are good odds your company will say "we accept your resignation effective immediately. Goodbye." Sometimes it's a blanket company policy to do this, sometimes it's because they know you're going to a competitor and they don't want you to start training for your new job, sometimes they were on the fence about you staying anyways.

Do not do this ever end. There is a significant chance you will be instantly fired with no income for months. Don't.

The moment you give your resignation, there are good odds your company will say "we accept your resignation effective immediately. Goodbye."

Genuine question; is this a US thing? I've never, ever seen this or heard of it happening. I don't think I've ever worked at a company that didn't state in the contract the notice period. I have seen companies decide they don't want that person on site anymore when someone quits, but they gave "gardening leave"; the person goes home and is effectively on holiday, paid as usual, for their notice period.

There is a significant chance you will be instantly fired with no income for months.

US "at will" kind of thing? Must be.

For some companies, when you give notice, you are flagged as a security risk. e.g., high chance you will take/steal IP. They will lock down your account, investigate your recent activities, and escort you out the door.

Two of my friends did this and were immediately terminated and ushered out of the building by security. Both were very large companies in the US.

When their former colleagues found out what happened, didn't that cause them to think "I guess I'll give zero notice when I leave"? I would think this would be a net loss for most companies, due to the predictable effect it would have on subsequent departures/handoffs.

In general AFAIK they'll typically pay out the customary two week notice period but take away your physical and computer access. (By no means universal but plenty of examples in this thread of where it happens.)

If so, then no problem, right? My reading of the "two friends" anecdote was that it was somehow a problem that they were canned on the spot. If you take away my physical/remote access, I can't even be asked to help with handoff.

>If so, then no problem, right?

I agree. It's the company's decision not to have you help with handoff. Not your problem. In fact, all the more reason to give two weeks notice as you'd be paid for doing nothing. (If they were immediately fired with no payout, they'd probably actually be eligible for unemployment though that's irrelevant if they have another job lined up.)

I didn't take the same conclusion from the parent who didn't say anything about payments. In general, the norm would be to pay for two weeks--and maybe benefits to the end of the month. Someone can be terminated on the spot and still paid. (In general, they have to be paid out for accrued vacation time in any case.)

If their policy is already to immediately terminate then does it make a difference whether they get advanced notice or not?

I did this in my first job, giving two months of notice because it was the right thing to do for my colleagues and the company since it'd allow transition time and continuity.

Then I was let go immediately. Which was an unexpected hit, though luckily the new company let me move my start date up. This was a tech company with around one hundred employees, and I was in good standing (my then manager later recruited me for a position at a different company).

The best approach is to always give two weeks formal notice on a Friday morning, with the expectation that there's a chance you'll not be coming back on Monday. Best to do all the transition preparation work before that moment. If I've got a manager that I trust, I let them know with a bit more informal advance notice.

ETA: on the other hand, I gave a month or two advance notice to Google, and they were happy to have me stay until my resignation date. My sense is that it's smaller companies that tend to do the immediate layoff.

US person here who has participated in a lot of online advice/mentoring forums. I've never once seen a tech company immediately "fire" someone who says they're resigning like the parent comment claims.

The only exceptions I can think of were when people gave multiple months of notice that they were going to quit and already had declining performance due to e.g. unhappiness about the job. If you're not performing well and you tell your employer that you're quitting in a few months, they're not really interested in giving you more paychecks to perform poorly. IMO, that's not exactly unreasonable either.

Some companies will restrict the employee's access for the notice period and remove their work as a way of protecting company information from last-minute exfiltration (it happens a lot more than you'd think), but those employees are still paid during this time period. They're also obligated to answer questions and attend meetings about handoff, although in some cases this may amount to zero work.

But no, it's not common for US tech companies to fire employees immediately for resigning. I don't know where the parent commenter got the idea that this is common.

I think this MIGHT work at a lot of smaller companies, but BIG tech companies tend to have a policy that you are a security risk as soon as you admit you're quitting. I suppose that falls under the umbrella of "working for a competitor"

If you work for Microsoft (for example) pretty much EVERY tech company is a competitor of theirs because they have soooo many products and services.

I saw this happen multiple times. You tell them you're leaving, and get escorted out by security. It's just not worth the risk for them.

> I saw this happen multiple times. You tell them you're leaving, and get escorted out by security. It's just not worth the risk for them.

Right, but did they cut off paychecks too?

Being walked out of the office is equivalent to having your access removed like I said above. It doesn't mean the person is fired, it just means they don't have access to sensitive information.

In practice, it's not really a big deal. If someone is going from a high-paid FAANG job to another high-paid FAANG job, the new company is usually eager to have you onboard. They can move your start date up. New compensation might be higher, too, so it's a net win.

As a datapoint, this wasn't my experience at Google. Both times I left I gave notice and continued working (with full access) up until my negotiated last day. I don't remember anyone else getting escorted out for giving notice either; in management conversations it was always "how much longer can we convince them to stay around to facilitate a handoff", as this post discusses.

Anecdotally, this was not my experience at Microsoft in 2013 or Google in 2017.

A policy that really makes no sense. If you have ill intentions, nothing precludes you from acting in bad faith in advance to give notice.

As someone who has recently left a big tech company for a direct competitor to the team I was in, in Europe, even the big tech companies often don't do this.

> US person here who has participated in a lot of online advice/mentoring forums. I've never once seen a tech company immediately "fire" someone who says they're resigning like the parent comment claims.

I've seen it happen multiple times. Microsoft has a list of competitors that if you say you are going to work for them, your access to everything is immediately revoked.

Managers at MS ask their employees to NOT SAY where they are going, so a proper off-boarding can take place.

Happened to me last year, US startup said "let's wrap this up today and not drag it out".

I've never had it happen to me, though in particular circumstances I've seen it happen with other people. But not with an immediate termination, just walked out the door -- they still got paid for the two weeks of notice they gave.

Mostly it was so we could find out if any ostensibly automated tasks were in fact dependent on their ongoing work, while they were still reachable to answer questions. Perhaps related, this was all during my time as a unix admin, before I officially converted to a pure software development role. I've never personally seen a developer walked immediately out the door.

No, it is not standard in the US.

It generally only happens in exceptionally paranoid companies in sensitive industries or government organizations, which clearly exist but are already atypical workplaces.

I've never seen the point in treating your employer as an adversary, as the OP of this thread clearly does.

Here in Norway, if they "let you go" immediately they still have to pay you for your contract notice time which is usually three months.

There are some with six (my last job) or some with one. In my last job I was able to negotiate it down though as I wanted to quit earlier, it was the employer that wanted the six months in my contract. I was a key person in a start up bank so it's not a normal term to have.

Depends on the company but this is the default most client-facing jobs. It removes the possibility of a representative from passing along info to company clients and also eliminates the ability of reps to copy client data to take with them to new jobs.

You are not technically fired. At the company I worked for, you are immediately walked to the door and you will not be able do any more work for the company. You will get your two weeks pay.

I am not sure what happens when you try to give more than two weeks notice.

> > The moment you give your resignation, there are good odds your company will say "we accept your resignation effective immediately. Goodbye."

> Genuine question; is this a US thing?

At least in California/Silicon Valley I have never seen or experienced such a thing in almost 30 years, so I can say confidently it is not common.

Of course it can happen, there are zero employee protections in the US. But it's not common.

People generally give 2 weeks notice and keep coming in to the office (pre-pandemic) for those two weeks to meet with others and help transfer knowledge, hang out, do farewell lunches etc. Only on the end of the last day is your account access revoked. That's the expected convention.

Sounds like you don't have a good relationship with your company and/or manager, and a lack of trust and thats whats driving your "no, no, no...".

What i've learned is if I can't have some kind of conversation with my manager about possibly leaving or being unhappy in the role, unhappy with compensation, etc.. then that is partially on me having let that relationship sour.

Obviously a lot of this depends on the kind of manager you have, and situation with the company and loads of other factors.

> there are good odds your company will say "we accept your resignation effective immediately. Goodbye."

No, it's not common practice for tech companies to immediately fire anyone who resigns.

A 2 week notice period is basically standard in the US tech industry. Some companies will take resignations and then remove the employee's access to sensitive material (code, chats, documentation, etc.) but require them to be available for 2 weeks to participate in handoff conversations. They continue to be paid, however.

It does happen that companies will immediately fired people. However, companies rarely do it because they stand to lose a lot of transition information and it also poisons the well for any future resignations. It also sets a precedent for remaining employees to not give any notice, which means everyone is going to start quitting without any notice in the future. This is bad, and companies want to avoid it.

Giving extremely long notice periods (e.g. "I plan to quit in a few months") could push the company to move up your departure date, though. The only time long departure notice is really warranted is for executives and truly key employees. Most people over-estimate their importance to their company and their project, IMO, but in some rare cases a single person can be instrumental to a company. It's nowhere near as common as people assume, though.

In practice, it's not really a huge loss even if it does happen. Most people get raises when they change jobs and the new company is often willing to move start dates up if you ask.

It’s a pretty common practice to walk people out the door immediately if they are known to be going to a competitor. They would still be paid for the 2 weeks though

> No, it's not common practice for tech companies to immediately fire anyone who resigns

It doesn't matter if it's a common practice. It's whether you want to deal with the uncommon outcome.

The odds might be long but the stakes are high.

Imagine in the United States giving 2 months notice thinking you're a good guy doing a mitzvah for your employer and then getting walked out the door and having to figure out COBRA insurance and getting by on unemployment and maybe a PTO payout if you're lucky.

Eh, you are always at risk of being fired, too. You’d have to have some kind of data to make the claim that this risk is more meaningful than the 1000 other risks you take every day.

Otherwise you’re just accepting status quo risks blindly, and thereby letting the mob make decisions for you. That seems risky.

What are the risks of giving 2 weeks notice compared to 2 months?

I have literally never experienced or witnessed this for any company I’ve ever worked for. This is just /r/antiwork leaking again.

Most companies have a standard resignation policy, if you don't know what the policy is at your workplace, you should really find out. Usually, you can also get the big picture by watching other people who have resigned before you.

I have worked at a company where the moment you signal your intention to resign, HR cuts you a check for your remaining PTO, your manager goes to your desk to collect your things in a box, and security escorts you out the door. But this was all well-known to everyone who worked there, so every departing employee made sure to say goodbye to their (trusted) co-workers before telling their manager.

The company I am at now, they let you stay on for basically as long as you want, but one to two weeks is typical. Most people don't make their departure fully public until their last day.

If your current company is the latter, then jumping ship without giving your manager and co-workers any kind of heads-up is a great way to burn bridges you might need in the future.

This doesn't seem correct to me. I've been in the industry coming up on 20 years, and I've never seen a company send someone home after putting in notice of resignation. Perhaps it happened and I didn't know about it, I can't rule that out, but I know that the majority of cases have not worked this way.

It's difficult to imagine why they would do this, since it would remove all the cushion that 2+ week period would provide the company for getting projects closed and documented, and bringing new people on to take over the employee's projects. It turns an unfortunate situation into an immediate crisis.

I have seen (recently) a company say "please, we are begging you not to resign, would you like to take a sabbatical and we can talk about it when you're back?"

> I've never seen a company send someone home after putting in notice of resignation.

only for people really underperforming, or going to a competitor

> or going to a competitor

Never say where you are going when you resign. That's standard practice (California, anyway) and nobody will ask.

> I've been in the industry coming up on 20 years, and I've never seen a company send someone home after putting in notice of resignation.

I have worked at a company that had a blanket policy of always doing this.

Let me be clear: it was a dumb policy. It resulted in employees waiting until their last day to tell the company that they were planning to leave. It created all kinds of havoc with the lack of knowledge transfer and handoff. And if it was intended to prevent exiting employee from taking malicious actions, it was completely ineffective at that since the employee would know about the policy and would choose not to disclose that they were leaving until after the head undertaken any malicious action.

But, I can say with some confidence that there are some tech companies that do this.

The response to this is "What you mean is that I'm fired, and I will be contacting the unemployment office immediately."

I love when someone has an experience which is rather unique to them (or at least definitely not universal) and vehemently shouts in absolutes.

I definitely agree with the article. I've given extended notice for many jobs I've left (again, usually on the order of several months). I had a good relationship with my manager, and I like to leave stuff "tied up with a bow". Similar to the experience in the article, it was good for both me and my employer.

I'm sorry you didn't have a relationship with your employer where you felt this was possible. And to be clear, I don't believe my experience is universal, but I think if most people stop to think about it, they will be able to figure out how their employer will respond.

Nothing about their comment is unique to an experience, yours on the other hand...

Risk isn't just about the likelihood, it's also the outcome.

Even if your manager loves you to death and there's just a .1% chance you misread the situation and your early notice goes wrong... the result of that .1% occurrence could be disastrous.

On the other hand, if a 2 week notice is likely to screw over your team, that's a sign of a bad employer. If 2 full weeks of notice isn't enough to stabilize things enough for you to leave on good terms, what happens if you're injured tomorrow?

2 weeks notice is good. The most you should do earlier than 2 weeks is start documenting the unwritten parts of your process and start getting others to understand those. A good manager will enable that without you saying you're walking out the door.

3-4 weeks is okay too, but this super advanced notice stuff seems bizarre to me. It's a nice thing to do for some jobs, but a really bad idea for 70-90% of us.

Plus, IME nobody wants to wait that long.

This. 100%.

You never let someone who gives notice keep their badge. You just say, "Congrats, there's the door. Cheers!"

You have no control over someone who has given notice. If they do good work... that's great. But if they do shit work, what are you going to do, fire them?

The liabilities are outrageous, and the payoff is only 2-weeks dev time (if you're lucky)... at the regular rate... Nah, not worth it.

And you have that person in the office talking about how they're moving on to a better role, with more pay, and it can quickly turn into a cancer for team morale.

I have never seen an article with such horrible career advice on Hacker News. This is bad advice.

What is cancer for team morale is that their coworker, Bob, was here yesterday and today he's gone. Was he fired? Did he rage quit? Neither one makes the employer look good or gives me confidence I should stick around.

I've always paid close attention to how my employers behave when someone gives notice: how you treat people/are treated when conditions aren't ideal shows you the true character of those involved. If the employer acts like a jerk, I know I'll get equal or worse treatment. I won't extend them any curtesy when I leave, which will likely be sooner rather than later based on their approach.

That said, I disagree with the article. In the US, we're lucky to have a common expectation: 2 weeks. I've added an additional week for small companies, but I'd never do more than that. 2 weeks is plenty, and quickly feels like being persona-non-grata.

Yeah, because people magically become mischievous spies for the competitor the moment they give notice. All this time they were job-hunting, doing interviews, and negotiating offers, it was just for fun, and they were still the "good guys". But the moment they communicate a decision to leave that they actually made a long time ago, when they started looking for another job, they automatically become Osama Bin Laden. Sure, it makes a lot of sense...

Am I missing something, or is this simple? You give the standard 2-week notice (or whatever your contract said), that's it. Up to you and them how you spend the final two weeks.

Idk what the alternative is. You tell them you want to quit in 2 months? Nobody does that.

This happened to me. No good deed goes unpunished (in this particular case).

They even get the smell you might be shopping around and you are toast. This article is shit advice. I had Google recruit me for L6/7 and I was exuberant about it on LinkedIn, really really really bad idea to even mention it.

LOL, I tried that at Apple, was immediately made to pack my stuff after watch of a security guard and escorted off premises. As if I couldn't copy their stuff first and give notice later if that was my intent.

Now obviously, in a mom and pop shop, I would discuss my desire to leave before I even started looking and help find/train my replacement, while they would likewise help me find a new job that better fits my life situation. But that's just not how corporate America works.

This is a strong point: context matters.

I signaled I was on the way out for quite a while ahead of putting in two weeks, and it was abundantly clear they'd take me back quite readily.

But that situation doesn't generalize.

> This is a strong point: context matters.

Absolutely. I've been at places where I was escorted out five minutes after I gave my notice, and at places where 10 years later they still call me every 8 months or so.

Same thing happened to me - told my boss on a Friday that I had received a job offer with a 55% pay raise and was probably going to take it, so we should think about off-boarding. Later that day my admin rights to the gitlab org were removed, was told that "it was a mistake", and was fired the following Monday.

They also took my $20k bonus that I was supposed to receive months earlier and used it as a carrot on a stick to get me to sign a bunch of legal paperwork releasing all my rights. At least I got the much needed money. I was really underpaid there.

I also lost my best friend who also worked there that decided to side with my boss and the company. lol It was a bad time.

Any company with so little money they are forced to use gasp gitlab strikes fear into the heart

Is this the new "Android people are poor"?

I love the "it was a mistake" "we're looking into it" "not sure what happened..." responses.

Not even just in this context, but in the context of everything. Corporate America is absolutely about deception and politics now, it isn't about working at all.

If your best friend abandoned you because you got a 55% raise and tried to give lots of notice, then your best friend was a jerk.

Good luck seriously in finding new and more quality friends! You'll find some!

The best friend violated one of the fundamental rules of being a worker. They are:

1. Your employer is NEVER your friend. You might be friendly with them but they will replace you in a second so it's best to have the right mindset from the start.

2. Every important correspondence needs to be in writing. If you asked your boss in person whether you could take vacation days, follow up and have them confirm it in an email.

The friend violated rule 1 and in the end it won't have mattered once they get laid off.

Yep. This is how it works in any corporation that has higly sensitive secrets -- regulatory, risk, trade, or otherwise -- that they are highly keen on keeping safe. As soon as you signal your intent to quit, if you were privy to any of those, you are a risk, and the priority is getting you off-boarded and your access revoked ASAP. That's just how it goes

^ this is it. The advice of this post is so dumb. Unless you have a good relationship with your manager and your skip and maybe skip skip you’re looking for trouble by giving any notice.

This is highly subjective as in it depends tremendously on the role, employer, and the given employee:employer relationship.

At one startup where I played workaholic for several years establishing substantial leverage and dependency on my presence, I didn't just give heaps of notice; I plain asked the CEO how to gracefully exit the company.

Right thing to do, yeah?

Except he disastrously mishandled the situation by insisting I stay "until the end". Neglecting to take advantage of the opportunity to tell me exactly for how long and with who the knowledge transfers should occur. Instead it just turned into a sort of pissing match where leadership was acting like they owned my autonomy/called my bluff, insisted on paying me for a month+ without coming in "for me to think about it". It was just a ridiculous calamity on their part, culminating in my leaving anyways without any transfer at all. (They eventually went bankrupt after burning >$100M, go figure)

In hindsight that experience alone discouraged me from ever letting myself work hard into such a role again.

And if you're not in some high-impact, difficult-to-replace, bus-factor role, giving notice really isn't all that important IMO.

I also categorically disagree with this advice. The people who benefit are not the ones in charge of the decision, and the benefit to your reputation for the ~5 people it really impacts does not outweigh getting to take a stress-free, risk-free sabbatical in between jobs. I have always asked to extend my start date out as far as possible and the new company always pushes back and I end up taking off a few weeks between jobs at most. I am not sacrificing that time for the potential of better parting feelings for a handful of coworkers who take over my stuff, when you should be working toward that lowered bus factor day-to-day, regardless of whether you are planning to leave.

Disagree with this on several levels.

One specific challenge comes as tech companies push more and more compensation to bonuses and other must-be-present-to-win approaches (RSUs, etc). If you leave shortly before a trigger date, you've essentially been working the entire previous year at a discount, since your contractual bonus for the time you worked will never be paid. If you continue significantly past a cliff, then your transition time is being worked at a discount.

If you give significant notice, one of two things can happen. If you give notice before the cliff, planning to depart after the cliff (that is, maximizing the percentage of the time worked where the company actually pays you what they agreed you were worth), the company can accelerate the departure schedule and avoid paying out; if you give notice after the cliff, you're inherently volunteering for discount work for a company you didn't even want to work for at full price!

In practice, I think at this point that companies that choose to put a large amount of compensation behind a cliff this way are responsible for understanding the consequences of that choice. If you pay 30% or my annual comp, and that of all my peers, on Monthuary 15th, then you should assume that you will get a cluster of resignations on Monthuary 16th each year, that those departures will happen in the standard two weeks, and that because they are clustered you will be unlikely to hand off as easily and fully as if they were scattered. But hey, you managed to screw some of my coworkers who had to leave mid-year for family reasons out of a few bucks!

I've heard of employers paying signing bonuses to make up for the fact that an employee is leaving a partially-accrued bonus on the table at the employer he's leaving.

Sure, getting your bonus bought out provides some superficial relief for this problem. But if your next employer thinks that your value is high enough to buy out your bonus, they likely think that independent of the current date (modulo a special case where your value /now/ is significantly higher than it would be in another quarter or whatever). Your next employer gets no value from the fact that you're leaving previous money on the table; if they offer to buy out a bonus, stay, get that bonus, then remind them that they thought you had that additional value and you'll take at as a signing bonus now, thank you very much.

I get what you're saying, but it could just be a way for a new employer to say "we have a policy of treating people fairly. We know that some new hires are going to lose out on bonuses depending when they join, so we have a policy of compensating these new hires for this loss".

I wouldn't want to start off with a new employer by negotiating for a bonus buyout and then staying long enough to get my original bonus (and expecting the buyout anyway). I would be interested to know if anyone has done this successfully. If I thought I had the upper hand in negotiations, I'd just ask for more pay, or a signing bonus independent of my foregone bonus.

If an employer offers a bonus buyout during negotiations, that's a straight-up offer of more compensation, in the form of a signing bonus. It's hard to come up with scenarios where an employer would offer you a certain total compensation, and then revoke that offer because a different, previous company paid you a bonus. Would you expect your employer to reduce your compensation if you refinanced your mortgage, in the name of fairness, since that portion of your salary was "intended" to cover housing costs? Compensation is about estimation of value (expected to be) delivered vs costs (expected to be) incurred, in the presence of highly asymmetric information. Previous bonuses might give nice framing for certain points during the negotiation, but that's just storytelling; the real negotiation doesn't care about them, and only slightly cares about start date in most circumstances.

Say the company hiring you agreed to pay relocation expenses from NYC to SF. If they then learned you were actually already living in SF they wouldn't just give you the money.

If the company went through the approval chain and got everyone to sign off on you being worth $comp + $relo, and you're value isn't effected by not choosing to $relo (because, in this case, you're already there), it should be pretty trivial to get everyone to approve a change to call that $comp + $signing_bonus since everyone involved already agreed to spend that portion of their budget on you. The case this doesn't apply is if their assessment of your value changes because they no longer trust you as much -- which does hint at an underlying rule of "even during a negotiation, don't be a dick" -- but the failure risk here is that you're providing symmetric access to the information that you're an asshole they might not want to work with, not that you asked for the compensation to be categorized differently.

So, yeah, I definitely have never solicited a bonus buyout and then done a bait-and-switch. But I've never actually solicited a bonus buyout -- I negotiate in terms of compensation I receive, not labels on it. I've had companies offer me bonus buyouts before, sometimes quite significant, and I've always taken that as a direct indication of their assessment of my value, not as something specific to the time of year.

What you're doing sounds fair. My reading of the upthread discussion was that someone who had asked for a bonus buyout should delay their departure until they could double-dip. That would be a huge red flag to me, if I were a new employer. But if it's all just part of comp, there's no specific issue.

Of course, the new company can say "you get X signing bonus if you join this calendar year, and x/2 signing bonus if you join next calendar year, since time is of the essence".

This sounds like pretty bad, or at least risky, advice. Mind you, I think it'll work on average; but it's a dishonest and adversarial way to start a new relationship, for probably not a ton of money.

How many times has David resigned this way? Twice!

I have seen probably close to 100 people give notice in my life. Many get the door as soon as they resign. Many get 2x the workload while the wrap things up. This is straight up naive advice.

One guy gave his 6 weeks notice, his last day would be two weeks after bonus payout. He was a super critical eng on a component in a system that brought in a couple hundred million in revenue. He had started documenting the systems, setting up meetings. HR informed the team that his last day would be the following friday. In 5 working days. It screwed the team and it screwed him. There was no backsies.

Why anyone would trust a corporation not to fire them immediately is being willfully naive. If one does do this, have all your ducks in a row and expect your last day to be the moment you submit your resignation.

Check with local labor laws and structure your resignation for maximum "impact" for whatever your definition of that word is.

I've given two weeks notice to employers I didn't like, and had immediate layoffs from employers I liked exceptionally, so I don't feel I should have any obligation in that regard except to myself. I'll the factors that the author mentions and plan ahead (like, taking vacation or exercising options if I care to), but negotiate the rest to my benefit.

Based on the article and some comments here, I realize it could be quite valuable to resign early in the month--like, in the first week. For my jobs (in the US), if they take the resignation and walk me out the door immediately, my health insurance would still be in force until the end of the month.

My direct experience is that its important to have a week of vacation in-between jobs, just to clear my mind and prepare for the new work. I had an employer who found it urgent that I start ASAP. I tried to negotiate away from their insistence, but eventually gave in to their request. It was the worst starting week ever in terms of my focus and comfort with the new job. Might have been better if I'd taken it as the bad sign that it was and declined their offer.

Upon receiving notice of intent to leave, one of my previous employers would walk you out the door same day. In their judgment, removing quitters immediately was worth the loss of organizational knowledge and team planning challenges that resulted.

Needless to say, their code was full of people papering over code no one understood anymore, duplicated features that interacted poorly, and so on.

Reading the comments in this thread really feeds into my bias that worker rights in the US are ... n't? I vividly remember a job posting from last year that listed '15 allowed sick days' as a benefit. What does that even mean?

In Scandinavia, you set a mutual duration of notice for both parties when signing the initial contracts to start working. For IT jobs, the standard is 2-3 months. This gives both parties ample time to adapt.

> Are things really as bad as they sound online?

No, online rhetoric bears only a passing resemblance to reality. Especially on HN, where most folks these days get unlimited vacation and work less than 40 actual hours per week. If you're in a low skill blue collar job you will definitely struggle more than someone in the skilled trades. And if you went deeply in debt because someone convinced you that a four year degree in business would pay for itself, I'm sorry.

>you set a mutual duration of notice for both parties when signing the initial contracts to start working. For IT jobs, the standard is 2-3 months. This gives both parties ample time to adapt.

That sounds like a nightmare to me. Sometimes I want to quit immediately. I should be able to rather than stay in a miserable job for 2-3 months.

You can, you just sacrifice the salary you'd otherwise of received

my contract has a month notice, but if I don't work then they don't have to pay me. One month notice is pretty standard in my country, but the wording also gives me an effective way of "no notice" quitting, obviously that's far from the norm here so it burns quite a lot of bridges.

You are correct, the US has very few rights for workers, at least federally. Different states have different work protection laws, California has a lot of well known work protection laws.

49 states out of 50 are what are known as "at will employment" states (Montana is the only exception). "At will" employment means that the worker or the employer can terminate employment at any time with no notice. There are some restrictions on this, for example an employer can't fire someone because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Additionally there are laws about how larger companies have to handle mass layoffs.

American worker rights are very low compared to Europe. But in certain industries, such as software, our benefits are in line with global averages.

"What does that even mean?"

It means you get 15 paid days a year to be sick. Beyond that, you have a certain number by law (I think 60) which you can take unpaid without risk of being fired. After that, sickness is theoretically grounds for termination, but very few large employers would do that because of the bad publicity. Also most IT workers here have long-term disability insurance for 'free' from their employers, meaning that they're still making 50 or 60 percent of their usual total comp for as long as they're sick after being fired.

"In Scandinavia, you set a mutual duration of notice for both parties when signing the initial contracts to start working. For IT jobs, the standard is 2-3 months."

I will gladly take a capped number of paid sick days to be able to leave in 2 weeks on good terms, and whenever I want otherwise. I will also take the lower unemployment rate that comes as a result of employers being unafraid to hire because they can easily fire. People seem to think labor flexibility is purely for the benefit of the employer. Not so. Short notice periods are a worker right, one Americans have and Europeans don't.

It is purely for the benefit of the employer. You can always negotiate a shorter or asymmetric notice period. There does not appear to be any relation between "flexibility" (at-will employment so companies can abuse you) and unemployment rates. Japan has 3% unemployment and stronger labor protections than Europe.

You could do a study with a lot more data points than that to see if there's a correlation. Which someone has, and there is: "Overall the results of the paper suggest that policies that enhance labor market flexibility should reduce unemployment."

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp1264.pdf

It wasn't a study, but showing that you can have the strongest labor protections and negligible unemployment. Worth striving for. But there are actual studies, including a few citing yours, that show no such relation. Regardless, a 1.29 point increase in unemployment for not having at-will employment sounds like a bargain to me.

I guess there are tradeoffs both ways.

I will gladly accept that downside(?) of having to give 3 months advanced notice for the upside of not being fired arbitrarily on the spot whenever my employer feels like it.

That's not the primary tradeoff -- that would be the reduced likelihood of being hired in the first place.

That's correct. There are labor laws but definitely no general concept of worker rights. It's a free market -- they can fire you at any time, and you can quit at any time. Generally speaking, the idea of injecting "rights" into a free, voluntary exchange of money for labor isn't a very American idea.

In American thought, rights are generally thought of as protections from government control/abuse. Right to free speech, association, religion, movement, etc. While when it comes to private negotiating with an employer or employee or landlord or tenant, "rights" aren't really an applicable concept. Although freedom from discrimination in protected categories (e.g. sex, race, religion) is a newer right that's now become fairly generally accepted in both the workplace and housing.

I'm not arguing this is god or bad, just that it's a different way of thinking from many European countries.

I completely disagree. in the long run, a company is not going to remember you gave them a lot of notice before leaving. your coworkers aren't likely to remember either, at least in terms of your ability to get references.

at the same time giving a long notice has a lot of downsides. your offer can get rescinded and now you are either jobless or have a very awkward conversation. your managers in this time will not respect your time, they will pile on all the work no one else wanted. 'lets put so and so on call, they are leaving in a month anyways'.

Everyone thinks they’re irreplaceable. I’m still honestly shocked my last company didn’t collapse when I left. And yes with 2 weeks notice

IME, it almost always blows over relatively quickly... it's almost sad.

Everyone is replaceable in the short term. Long term if you lose a few key employees people are left wondering where it all went wrong.

Echoing all the previous statements, I gave two weeks' notice when I left my first real job (Microsoft), and they immediately walked me out the door. In this case they weren't jerks about it-- my manager even apologized to me and said if it was up to him they'd've let me stay, but said it was absolutely iron-clad policy that he couldn't change-- but yeah, giving even more notice than that seems to be advice that could only come from someone tremendously naive who has never actually worked in tech.

I've been at companies like that, when I told my manager I was leaving, he was basically "lets wait to tell HR until X date so they don't walk you out and you can transition your stuff". Didn't bother me, as the benefits mentioned in article applied.

I think there’s a kernel of truth in this post, it does make the correct observation that 2 weeks is not always the correct time. I think it’s deeper than that, there are multiple correct times that are incompatible with each other.

This is because there are multiple ways you are integrated into the company and the correct wind-down period for each is different. A few months to find and train a replacement, a few weeks to document all your organizational knowledge, a few days to say goodbye to your colleagues - and for companies with valuable secrets it’s obviously desirable that your access to their information is revoked instantaneously.

Ultimately, for a senior software engineer, quitting is just complicated. I think if you want to try a variable-length notice of resignation you need to find someone in the chain of command you trust to be level-headed and pragmatic, approach them with your thoughts of leaving, and (matching their level-headedness and pragmatism) discuss how to make your departure as successful and effective for the company as possible - maybe you start documenting knowledge now, wind down day-to-day fire-fighting responsibilities a week from now, and formally announce your two weeks notice a week after that.

But you have to go into that discussion prepared to roll with the decisions they make, all the way from “immediate dismissal and escort from the building” to “they do not want you to quit and try to offer you more money or different responsibilities”. If that gives you trepidation, maybe it’s better to stick to the business standard of two weeks notice. It’s not optimal, but it is well-trodden ground.

2 weeks is the standard? I am amazed.

In Switzerland where I live, it is 3 full calendar months. And I thought Switzerland is very similar to the USA...

My god 2 weeks lol, someone quits and he is gone the next day. How is this legal?

> And I thought Switzerland is very similar to the USA

What?

I suggest you come and visit.

Switzerland is more similar to the US than the rest of Western Europe in a lot of ways. This is not one of them.

Poland has 3 months for some cases. It is unusual in the rest of the world.

In Romania you give 2 weeks notice as an IC and 4 weeks as a manager. It can be shorter if the company agrees, but it cannot be longer by law: you can tell them in advance if you want, they cannot force you to stay if you don't.

I'm also amazed by the stories of managers who immediately layoff workers who said they will quit.

Why ?

Is this like some "Oh no you're not deciding to quit, I decided first you're fired, I call dibs !" ?

The dude said they will leave anyway. And doing the layoff will just allow him to leave without extensively teaching someone else.

This should be illegal as well.

It really depends on the worker, in my experience, and their approach to the situation.

I had one person who gave a full year's notice, so that we could hire, train, and integrate the new worker before she left. It was glorious and resulted in zero down time.

I have had another who gave one month's notice, and spent the entire time being toxic. Digging out from under that took the better part of three years. The overlap for technical knowledge was just simply not worth the headaches in the team.

It's highly subjective, but it really does depend on the person, in absence of a clear "they're out immediately policy". But as a manager, my preference is to select a date roughly one week out from the notice and use that as the exit day. That way the worker can close any relationships they have, positively, but if they go sour there isn't really enough time to screw up the rest of the team.

In the context of your statement, we only hear one side of the argument. Remember that there is always a second perspective. I know that I have had folks who I have told to just go the same day they gave notice who tell their friends that I'm an uncaring asshat. The reality is that I fully expected them to be toxic in their remaining time.

>I had one person who gave a full year's notice

I don't understand how anyone could do this with exception of retirement. Who will hire you with one year long advance?

> Who will hire you with one year long advance?

They probably hired them ahead of time and had both working for a time. It can also take a long time to find someone.

She was quitting because she was going to be a stay at home mother.

We hired the replacement and they worked side by side for ~ 10 months. It was amazing.

I could see this happening in a project based environment or with someone who has a long term plan to pivot away from work(travel/family/having kids/etc). If you're working on something pretty big, you might be willing to see it through, and quit before moving on to the next thing.

I wouldn't assume they were planning on a new job immediately. Could be maternity/paternity leave, a plan to sail around the world, whatever.

Could also be an in demand skillset. If you get interest every week, you're probably not worried about being able to find work in 10 months or whatever.

>you're probably not worried about being able to find work in 10 months or whatever.

Which carries some risk. If you've had a dream to sail around the world, hike the Appalachian Trail, etc. and you have some decent money in the bank, it may be the right call. But you can also return to a more challenging employment environment.

Obviously; lots of things have risk, that's part of life.

I was just suggesting plausible scenarios where someone might have decided the risk/reward was right for them.

25 yrs ago, I did something similar.

I worked for a systems integrator that developed a turnkey software system for a client. It was a massive project (a systems migration) and ran for 3 years until handover. I was the lead on the project.

A couple of years later, I left my employer and joined a startup. 10-11 months later, the startup was looking to cut its burn rate and the CEO asked me to look for a job outside as revenues were not coming in as planned. He did promise me one thing. I could come back and join them after they became cash positive. He expected this to happen in 12-18 months. I trusted the CEO.

By pure coincidence, the client I worked several years ago was completely exiting operations from one of their operating locations (employees were offered to move to another city or leave with severance pay). The entire team that we had handed over the new turnkey system was being let go and none of the opted to move to a different city.

I applied for the job and got it. I told the management (they were from the other city) that I will de-risk the transition for them completely since I knew the system like the back of my hand and laid out one condition. I will stay for 2 years and will need a replacement to join in the 2nd year (there were some intricacies in the system that had daily, weekly, monthly and yearly processes) and I wanted my replacement to be trained on all steps. So, a year of overlap was justified. The hiring manager and the division VP, both interviewed me and agreed to this.

I did my job true to my conscience. As planned, I let them know at the end of the first year that a replacement needs to be brought in. A lateral hire came in as my replacement and I trained him and completed the knowledge transfer.

I quit after the second year as originally planned. My startup CEO rehired me back into their company which was now revenue-generating and cash positive. I joined in a senior leadership position.

That was one of the most intricate knowledge transfer of my career and I have been very happy. It wouldn't have been possible without the various parties trusting each other.

Someone on my team just gave a 1-year notice a couple months ago. She hasn't lined up the next gig, and won't start seriously looking until later this year. She has more than enough cushion to cover a gap, and she feels some loyalty to the team to make it a seamless transition (she's been here quite a long time).

That might actually be doing the employee a favor.

In many jurisdictions you can start collecting unemployment a lot faster if you're laid off rather than quitting.

This is sometimes done as a security concern to keep employees from swiping data or causing havoc. An employer may also assume that an employee with 2 weeks left will have tanking productivity, so why keep them around? The good employees will try to wrap things up and do knowledge transfer, but this certainly isn't going to be the majority of people.

You can swipe the data and leave havoc causing traps before giving notice, right? what am i missing?

The part where the employee has self-selected themselves as a risk. Lots of the major companies have capability to identify when an employee is downloading tons of data and files, but for the less sophisticated ones, you pretty much just have to look out for motive, and an employee giving notice is probably disgruntled...which is at least a little bit of motive.

I would think that labour laws most definitely are different in those countries. Although USA does have variability by state

In the US, it's generally considered important to the economy that employees have good job mobility. There's plenty of stories of awful employers / managers; so job mobility is generally considered how workers protect themselves.

In general, because workers can pretty much leave whenever they want, employers need to make sure there's good financial incentives and good working conditions. Some employers will provide things like retention bonuses, stock plans tied to staying employed for a certain length, or other incentives that employees give up when they quit.

As far as a mandatory 3 month notice period: As an American, the few times I've been in a "bad" job, I've just wanted to leave. A 3 month period would just make me miserable. I'd rather have some kind of financial incentive to stay to a certain date.

If you get fired in Switzerland, your employer gives you a notice period of 3 months as well. Which is nice because it's plenty of time to find another job.

In most US states, you can go into the boss' office and say "I quit" and walk out the door.

All states

Yeah, unless your job is the military. This is a 14th amendment issue.

*13th amendment.

Or some variation of that like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_This_Job_and_Shove_It

Or just not show up for a few days if you really want to

Same for me in the UK - 3 months seems to be standard for people that have institutional knowledge. I know other positions have shorter times.

Edit: although I’m not sure how it would play out if I decided to just do nothing for those 3 months if I were to leave

I thought it was well known that employment law and customs differ greatly between US and Europe.

For example the difficulty in firing someone in France was a plot device in "Emily in Paris". In most states in the US you can be fired with immediate effect from a non-government job at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all.

> My god 2 weeks lol, someone quits and he is gone the next day. How is this legal?

You're not even required to give two weeks, though that's widely considered to be a courteous thing to do. If it's employment at will (as most jobs are in the United States), you can put down your tools and walk out the door with no notice of any kind. The other side of that coin is that the employer can fire you/lay you off, also with no notice.

You can ALWAYS just put down your tools and walk out the door. “At will” laws have to do with the employer firing you.

> You can ALWAYS just put down your tools and walk out the door.

Not if you've signed a contract which says otherwise, which of course would make it not "at-will" employment.

"At-will" applies to both the employer and the employee. Either can terminate it without notice.

"At-will means that an employer can terminate an employee at any time for any reason, except an illegal one, or for no reason without incurring legal liability. Likewise, an employee is free to leave a job at any time for any or no reason with no adverse legal consequences."

https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/at-will-employment...

We also cut staff without notice in the US

I once quit a job by saying "I don't want to work here anymore" and then walking out the front door. 2 weeks' notice is just a custom.

The same way that when someone fires you and you're gone the same day?

The 3 month notice in Europe goes both ways. You can’t be fired on the spot, unless for gross misconduct.

> My god 2 weeks lol, someone quits and he is gone the next day. How is this legal?

How is it legal for this not to be the case? We have constitutional laws against enslavement or indentured servitude here. Nobody can force you to work if you don’t want to. You can quit right now if you want to.

What happens if you stop showing up to work in Switzerland? Do you go to prison?

You can be held in contempt for leaving your job in the US.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/us/thedacare-lawsuit-wisc...

To be fair, this is Wisconsin. The judge is probably the guy that runs the hospital's brother-in-law.

Uh, your link seems to be about the judge ruling that the workers can't be prevented from leaving their job.

If I sent you a link about a person's funeral to show a person had been born, would you not accept that either? The article is about the funeral of the order.

The workers were not held in contempt though.

What do you think happens if you violate a court order? That's the threat behind violating the order of a judge. That it didn't happen doesn't mean my statement was incorrect. If they had actually left in contempt of the order, I would have said it did happen rather than it can happen.

What happens in Europe if you're supposed to work out 3 months notice and you stop showing up:

- you stop getting paid. - you probably will have a hard time dealing with your former employers if you need something from them. - they think you're a dick, and tell other people, if asked, what an asshole you are. - potentially if they have nothing better to do, they get a lawyer to write you a threatening letter, then do nothing.

"and tell other people"

Nobody cares enough to go tell other people. Just try to picture the super awkward conversation between executives about and IC who resigned and then did noting during the notice period. In fact, they'd probably do the same.

"if asked"

So exactly the same thing, except for the threatening letter (the lawyer would tell you there's no grounds for it).

I have never understood this "slavery" argument. It's not enslavement, it's fulfilling a contract. They won't put you in jail if you don't show up, you're simply in breach of contract.

It's like if you're a freelance and you accept a project. They can't force you to work on the project until completed, but they can certainly levy financial penalties against you if you don't.

> They can't force you to work on the project until completed, but they can certainly levy financial penalties against you if you don't.

There are very few circumstances in the US in which an employer can do that. It is considered wage theft, which in many states is a criminal offense that pierces the corporate veil. If you worked hours you get paid for those hours and the company can't avoid paying you (with fees or whatnot).

If you are forced to work because if you don't then you will be fined for breach of contract, then that is indentured servitude with extra steps. That is illegal everywhere in the US after the 13th amendment. That's why in the US employment contracts are generally enforced with rewards (aka golden handcuffs) rather than punishments.

Does that mean that any contracted work is indentured servitude? That sounds really broad. If I hire you to build a website, and you bail out halfway through and the liquidated damage clause kicks in, I don't think that makes you my indentured servant.

I was most likely confusing with "financial penalties", mostly it means not paying you after you stop working, and in some specific circumstances you can sue for damages. They can't fine you.

There generally aren’t financial penalties of any sort in those cases, except that you just don’t get paid the full potential value of the contract. You are generally paid hourly for the work that you do in a freelance gig (if it is an hourly contract) and paid a bonus on completion. If you fail to complete there is no bonus. Or in the case of a fixed price contract you are given a small amount upfront, and the full payment upon completion. You are never penalized for breaking contract—-you just don’t get paid the final amount.

It's only 3 months if you've worked for over 10 years at the same place (or you have a different contractual agreement of course). Otherwise it's a week during the probation period (usually 3 to 6 months), 1 month the first year and 2 months between 2 and 10 years.

Also it's symmetrical. Switzerland is "at will" (in the sense that they can lay you off at any time for any reason), but they have to follow the same notice period. In essence this is mandatory minimum severance.

Speaking as a manager who has managed numerous people through their exit as well as a job changer.... I have to say I disagree with the advice to give extended notice.

Proper notice (in US at least) without severe mitigating circumstances is two weeks and that's what you get. If the employer wants to it to be less then so be it. FWIW I've changed job 5-6 times over my professional career and every single time it's been a cordial exit where I've worked out my final two weeks.

As the employee submitting your notice - have your ducks-in-a-row before turning in your notice as it maximizes your chance for a smooth exit.

>As the employee submitting your notice - have your ducks-in-a-row before turning in your notice as it maximizes your chance for a smooth exit.

Right. If you have vesting events, expected bonus payouts, etc. wait until after those happen before giving notice as opposed to just assuming the employer will keep you on the payroll as an employee for those two weeks.

If you gave two weeks notice and got terminated immediately to prevent you from benefiting from something that would have vested in that two week period, you have an excellent legal case. Very few businesses of any reasonable size would pull that stunt, it isn't worth the headache. Some very small businesses might try it, because they may not have competent legal counsel to warn them away.

Why take the risk of needing to pursue legal action? Would waiting a couple more weeks kill you?

Agree with others that it's bad advice. At my last job I gave about 5 weeks notice which my manager convinced me to extend to 6 weeks. I was a manager and timing at the end of the year was not ideal due to performance review schedules and holidays.

Never again. Everything was much more dragged out. Lots of idle time. Lots more "so I hear you're leaving" conversations. Next time, I might do one week notice since this seems to have become a lot more common.

I've seen people give management 1-2 months notice and only make it broadly known for the last 2 weeks. Obviously depends on how much you trust management, but it can avoid that awkwardness.

I've done this, and it's always worked out well for me. My past three jobs received a 1 month notice. The one before that, I told the hiring manager up front that I'd work for them for exactly 1 year.

Most of the comments here are against this, many saying they were prematurely removed, some immediately. Perhaps it is different for FAANG and other SV companies typical of HN?

Possible reasons why my experience has been different:

- I've never worked in a role that is easily replaceable. I've worked mostly consulting for the past decade. The industry has a lot of hiring friction, like extensive background checks, making it hard to give up and replace quality workers. In most cases, even my long notices did not give the employers enough time to find a replacement for me to train.

- My direct supervisors, managers above them, and myself, have always shared mutual respect - even when they are difficult people. We all also understand our compensation is mostly related to what customers are paying, so there is no expectation that our salaries can be magically increased.

Granted, I did leave one employer over a decade ago with just a day's notice. The company had a lot of problems and hadn't paid me for a few months already, so quitting was well overdue.

Having this legally set up in France (typically to 3 months) makes it easier for everyone. As an employee you do not get to choose, as the former employer you know exactly what to expect, as the new employer you know you will need to wait.

This time can be negotiated down by mutual interest of both parties. It is usually the employee who would initiate the discussion.

The calculation also takes into account vacation time so it may be much shorter from the perspective of the employer.

Finally, the employer can forbid the employee to come to work and get back all the equipment, but still has to pay them for the 3 months.

This article assumes that you are working for sane people. I left a job after 9 years. I gave 30 days notice. The reason I was leaving? My manager was micromanaging me and threatening me daily.

I felt the obligation to give longer than 2 weeks notice because I've been there for so long and was a key employee. Instead of appreciating it, the manager decided that I needed to source, higher, and train my replacement within that 30 days. And then they actually made my life even worse. I ended up quitting two weeks in. I couldn't take it.

So yes if you have a wonderful work environment and people who are totally normal and are glad you are there, then giving 30 days notice is great. But if you have that environment, why would you be leaving?

>But if you have that environment, why would you be leaving? One possible reason would be: you want to do something else because you are bored (ex: you are tired of transforming baroque rules designed by bussines analysts into code) and you don't work in a company where you can transfer laterally.

Yeah, I said that somewhat halfheartedly. Brain foggy. I'm just glad my words came out legible.

>"Everyone will thank you and appreciate you because you are really doing them a favor.

working is a business transaction. "appreciation" comes in the form of cash. if you're not being offered more cash to stick around (beyond the wages that were clearly insufficient motivation), then no, they don't appreciate it.

People at your company besides those with the authority to pay you can also be appreciative.

I gave 4 months notice once, at a 15-person company where I was the lead of a 3-person team responsible for everything technology at the company. My boss was the sort who would tell people to leave immediately, and happily pay the 2 weeks they intended of notice. But I was critical to the functioning of the company, and I was able to hire and onboard a successor. I continued consulting part-time for a while past the end of my employment, it was good for everybody. I've never worked at a job where I would afford the company such a luxury of my time.

I've done this many times, I know for a fact that almost NONE of the prep work, training, file organization, email handoffs, exit/handoff plans, and so on...were ever used except to allow somebody to make excuses on their 'delays' in the first few months after I left.

I've also worked in industries for many years, and was told this line about 'leaving on good terms'. Honestly though, you could just about nearly commit murder - your 'name' and 'reputation' don't matter if there money / a deal to be made. And you'll almost never meet ICs again, so why are you bothering to 'leaving on good terms'. Its a fantasy. Grab names and emails on the way out, though, might be handy.

And, sometimes, you should just go. Seriously. If you didn't care so much trying to make it all happen and work and 'meet timelines', all that would happen is something would fall behind and the management would finally do their job and give relief to the team you think you're helping by doing so much work to 'offramp' - and perhaps get the people they refused before because you were handling it. Seriously, just dropping your shit where you stand and walking out into the sun one fine day may be the greatest gift you give that 'team' of yours.

> And you'll almost never meet ICs again, so why are you bothering to 'leaving on good terms'. Its a fantasy. Grab names and emails on the way out, though, might be handy.

If you only want to be an IC forever sure who cares?

If you want to found a company/lead teams, those people are the network you’ll bring to your next gig. Why fuck them over?

What's also funny is this idea that leaving a company ASAP will put you on bad terms with your coworkers whom you might need to rely upon in the future.

Outside of very specific circumstances, it's probably not the least bit true. Most of us simply aren't that important, and very few of us are that important that a team will be screwed if we GTFO ASAP. I can count on more than one hand the times that the lead developer or PM were gone for multiple weeks and virtually nothing changed as a result. If coworkers are indeed screwed by your departing without taking a month to do prep work, that's more often a sign that the company is dysfunctional. It's a rare circumstance that someone has unique skills and knowledge that aren't easily replaced.

I've had my share of times where I left a company either less than two weeks after or immediately upon quitting, and have never been shunned by coworkers I was on good terms with. It just doesn't happen. Nobody cares. If anything, I've been praised by coworkers I've been reaquainted with at other companies for leaving behind a dysfunctional environment with few f@$#s given.

Can't help but be mildly amused by the article and many of the comments. Here in Germany the standard "Kündigungsfrist" is often three months to the end of the current month at many tech (and other) places.

For example, if I wanted to quit my current job (which I'm currently contemplating), I'd have to make sure to do it in april, otherwise I'll be stuck for another month.

It does go both ways, a company can't just fire you without reasonable cause, such as gross misconduct. But in most cases people stop trying after handing in their resignation - which I can't blame them for - and as a manager I'd like to release them earlier.

Also German here. I always wondered what would realistically happen if you just didn't how up anymore?

Lol 'gold standard' please. This is management PR.

I've only ever seen 2 week notices screw the workers over- it happened to me several times (to the point I will never do it again no matter the employer).

Businesses don't give you notice, you don't owe them a single day.

No one owes a company any more than required for their paycheck, stop giving loyalty where none is given.

Also- can we please start calling 'layoffs' what they are- firings.

Layoffs are done as restructuring, and used to be done in bankruptcy filing, or they used to mean you'd be brought back in. Now companies call every permanent firing 'letting go' or 'layoff'.

Stop letting companies re-define words for PR speak.

Edit-spelling

I once cut my holiday short so that I could have more time to pass on knowledge about my projects. I left everything documented and up-to-date. Nobody gave me much attention and a year later a new employee was asking me to come by and give a hand.

So that's something I'm never doing again.

The posted article presents a naive point of view.

In tech, it's very common for those who resign to be walked out of the building immediately.

In corporate America, the idea that you'd give THEM more notice than they'd give YOU in the event of layoffs is one-sided.

By all means, plan your exit carefully. Ensure your own security. If it's an amiable parting, try not to leave them in a lurch. But all of that is you being nice, not something you have to do. If, as is often the case, you're leaving because you're very unhappy with your situation, there's no point in prolonging it. Go.

Yeah, two weeks is customary in the US and most employers will either take you up on the offer or walk you out the door but pay for the two weeks anyway because it's not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things and it's just easier that way. (and if they weasel out of that two weeks pay it's not a lot of money from the employee side.) I did give 2x longer notice once and it ended up fine but wasn't really necessary.

What is important is that if there are vesting dates and things like that, wait until those happen rather than assume employers will let you mean employed through notice periods, vacation days, etc.

And, yes, there are doubtless circumstances where "I won't be working here as of next Monday" is probably the prudent approach.

Same experience as many here for me when leaving two companies with a quite long but somehow standard 3 month notice here in France: it felt nice to give my managers/coworkers some time, but overall it wasn't useful. Most of the 2 first months was "as usual" and the real information sharing was done somewhere during the last month. The last week or two were absolutely useless for me and others, as it's just wandering around without any precise task, and everyone being like "oh, you're still here?"

Nobody gave this person this advice because it is bad advice, period.

Give your contractual notice, whether thats 2 weeks in the US, or a month or 3 months in the UK or whatever and be prepared to actually leave at the end of it.

Any other advice is actually harmful to the majority of people.

There is no contractual notice required to be given in the US.

72 hours notice in some states if you want to be paid out for everything they owe you on the spot.

But otherwise I give them about as much notice as they would give me: at 4:59PM on Friday I send an email to HR informing them that today was my last day.

Can your contract state otherwise?

IANAL, but I don't think that a contract can force you to give a particular amount of notice no matter what (I think that would be considered "unconscionable"). But I imagine a contract could specify that if you don't give a certain amount of notice, you won't get severance or similar.

Severance is “bribe” money: it is dangled to people being laid off in return for them signing a paper stating that they give up all rights to sue the company.

Severance is never paid unless you sign away your rights.

There is no contractual requirement for severance.

We are at will slaves.

The article is so idealistic that I'd call it delusional.

Rule 1: Know exactly what your employer's policies and past practices are. Ditto local culture. There is ~zero chance that you actually are Mr./Ms. Special, who your employer will happily treat differently.

(Exception: If you have to leave for an extremely sympathetic and/or involuntary reason - fatal cancer diagnosis, drafted into army, etc. - that may actually get special treatment. Even then, such treatment is far more likely at smaller firms, if management cares about maintaining a "good guy" reputation.)

Rule 2: If you have some latitude, be considerate with your timing. Giving notice right before the big crunch or busy season will endear you to no one.

Rule 3: Never assume that your employer is going to be nice about it. Ditto for them being rational about it, unless currently-in-place management has a long and distinguished history of that.

> There is ~zero chance that you actually are Mr./Ms. Special, who your employer will happily treat differently.

Except when you are.

When I turned in my notice (in writing), I noted that according to my contract my notice period was X days, but that I wanted to ensure a proper handoff and would voluntarily extend my notice period to X+Y days. The employer was happy to accept X+Y, without arguing. HR even stated that they appreciated me doing it.

Then again, I'm not in the US.

Guess I must be in the minority because I've only worked jobs where I've left on good terms and have always given a month's notice. Don't know if it's luck, or many of you suck at picking good places to work at

Giving notice? Be ready to be walked out of the building, which I believe would be as likely as the Pollyanna scenario outlined in the OP.

{In which case the part about 'get benefits longer' goes out the window.}

When I worked for a Microsoft contractor in 2015, the owners took it very personally whenever someone wanted to leave. If you gave any notice they would accept it without question, but a couple of days later security would suddenly show up and escort you out of the building. That taught me that when I do give notice to prepare to be let go immediately, have everything wrapped up and ready to go.

As a manager I can tell you having a team member leave is not a “get out jail free card.”

First you will have to explain why X person is leaving, and it will generally be considered your fault.

Second if your team isn’t resistant enough to absorb the impact of one team member leaving, this will also be scrutinized and viewed negatively.

Managers are responsible for their team’s performance and not one individual

I gave 2 years notice at a software job I'd been at for 10 years. It was great! I said I was going to go do something new when I turned 30. The boss appreciated it and we had a lot of time to adjust the direction of the company in the meantime.

This was at a very small, tight-knit place though. I'd never do this at a big company.

If I believe I have a lot of knowledge to transfer, I'll do a 2 week + X notice. I've done 1m notice, and that was excessive I believe. Otherwise, 2 weeks is standard in the US, and I have no reason to deviate. Nor would I conventionally just walk out that-day, as that leads to a bad odor.

If I was waiting for a bonus or cliff, of course I'd wait until after the date before formally giving notice. Because, of course, that would be a problem if the Management decided to terminate me immediately.

It's quite contextual, of course, but I prefer to follow local standards.

This is terrible advice, the company will never give you a heads up if they are going to fire you. Do what's best for you. Keeping a good relationship with your current employer comes second.

Not only will they not give you a heads up, they'll outright lie to you about lay-offs right until the moment they happen.

The article is precisely about how the extended notice period is good for the employee, not the employer.

The company doesn't care, but your manager and you team might. It is maintaining those relationships that works to your benefit in the future. Burning bridges just because you can is a pretty reliable way of limiting your future career prospects, at least in your local area. Word gets around.

I dunno... be careful with this advice - a long exit ramp can be shortened by the company, or they can make your life miserable during that time if they don't.

I once worked at a place where notice was neither expected nor tolerated: the moment you decided to leave, you were done - a quick exit interview with HR, grab any personal items from your desk, and out the door you went. I think the time between informing my boss that I was quitting and permanently driving away was about half an hour.

I don't know if I'd argue that their policy was "best", but there is some logic to it - once a person has decided to leave, they are often mentally already out the door anyway, and having them stick around can be a pretty big drain on everyone who is still there, especially with the tendency for some people to need to justify a decision in the eyes of other people. Some people can be really good about a long goodbye, while others will just sort of poison the well the whole time and drag down morale.

I gave a month notice at my old job so I could close out a project for a client before I left. In the end I don't think anyone but the client cared and it meant I had very little time off before the next job started (three days lol). They also had me train my replacement who spent most of those sessions bitching to me about how he also wanted to leave...

This hasn't been mentioned much in the comments but it's a big factor for a lot of people. You're probably going to have trouble pushing a new employer out much beyond 4-6 weeks. And, has been discussed here previously, there's always some risk that the further you push out a start date, the more chance there is that something could go sideways in the interim. So, if you want to take off 3-4 weeks between jobs, you really can't give too much notice.

> If they do not understand and MUST HAVE YOU NOW, that is a red flag... Most companies, though, don’t have a problem with delaying someone’s start date.

This is not true at all in my experience. Very often companies are hiring to expand a team in order to hit a certain deadline, whether it's back-to-school or a big conference or a signed contract or whatever. Or to cover for someone taking maternity, etc.

If you can't start on the required date, the offer will frequently go to someone else. This is not a red flag at all, but rather simply a reflection of the business world.

Sometimes companies are hiring in a more leisurely way, but that is the exception rather than the rule.

So really this is what invalidates the entire article for me. You don't want to quit until you have a new job lined up, but that job very frequently will require you to be starting the Monday following two weeks from accepting (assuming it doesn't involve relocation).

Generally speaking (small sample size), I've been able to move things out a few more weeks because I've wanted to take a vacation or hit a vesting date. But I agree in general. You can't usually move a start date out months.

I think commenters might not be aware of potential legal consequences of various approaches to quitting your job. Employers might no option but to get you out the door immediately. It depends on the domain. IANAL so I will not comment on specifics only to say that, as an employer, I've had to consult our attorney in cases where we were working on government/aerospace programs.

On the other side of the equation, years ago I had one of our engineers tell me he was starting a business and would likely have to leave in three months (over the summer). As much as I didn't like the idea of him leaving, I thought it was a fantastic move for him. I am 100% pro-entrepreneurship and fully supported his decision. In fact, during the that summer --the last three months he worked for us-- we all went out of our way to help him in any way we could. I wanted to personally make sure he launched into his new business with a solid footing.

As a result the transition was beautiful. We even threw a party in celebration just before he left. We still keep in touch. He is doing well. After he left he was happy to come over a couple of times and help resolve things we missed during the transition.

If you treat people like human beings and show them you truly care for their wellbeing everything is better. Companies come and go. People, and their relationships, tend to stay. If sometime in the future I closed-down my business and needed a job, I know I could reach out to him and get hired if he needed help.

I don't say this in a religious sense: Treat others the way you would like to be treated.

To answer the obvious question: In the couple of cases where the attorneys said immediate release was required, we went way out of our way to explain why this had to be. We also provided a solid financial cushion in order to ensure the person leaving didn't jump into a vacuum. It sucks when legal-crap gets in the way of considerate, compassionate human relations. Sometimes you have no options on the table.

Big companies I've worked for won't allow a long notice period. They don't want the risk.

I think this is very dependent on the company and your role. I've given as much as 2 months notice before, and typically it's closer to 3 weeks than 2 weeks, but I don't think this is always appropriate. In fact, I'd say it's a bad idea more often than not. You should ensure you're not leaving people in a lurch that you may later use in your network to further your own career (I now work with people I last worked with 9 years ago, as an example, which is an eternity in startup-land). But you also shouldn't extend your notice so long it becomes an imposition. You're leaving, so sort things out and leave.

I saw many times notice longer than 6 months; the record so far is more than 2 years, but these are special cases: - very high level people like VP level or above - 6 months during which they fully onboard a replacement - a former colleague that was past retirement age, but they had no replacement for him so they convinced him to stay longer (he gave 2 years notice) - my boss is on notice for retirement in more than 18 months from now (he can retire any day he wants, he was the age and he is meeting all criteria)

But other than that, I don't recommend a notice longer than 1 month, that is enough for almost any case.

This is incredibly dependent on your working relationship with your employer, and even if you think you know... sometimes they'll surprise you.

If you work at a very large company (hundreds of employees) do not do this. Even with a good working relationship terminating a quitter on the spot can often be security policy. I've quit a job and wasn't even allowed to touch my computer, just walked right out the door (before you give notice, back up your personal files and build your portfolio if they're on there).

So I’ve been both an employee and a manager in companies that aren’t faang level but break 1 billion in yearly revenue.

This is advice from someone privileged enough that it was easier for their manager to ignore them as a problem, rather than deal with them.

Off the get go, it’s standard practice to remove all permissions and access to systems from someone who has tendered notice, in the interest of investors, security execs, and anyone who cares about the long term health of the applications being worked on.

The investors and security execs are placated by knowing that someone who has indicated they might possibly be disgruntled doesn’t still have access to damage the systems. Any manager who cares about the long term health of their systems doesn’t want someone involved in the day to day architecture and design designs who already knows they won’t have to deal with any problems that arise after a few weeks.

This isn’t even to blame the employee in question, they just no longer have the incentives to care about the codebase after their notice.

I have also definitely never seen a single person who gave notice and didn’t have access cut off, get to “focus on the fun parts of the job”. In that case they were normally tasked with knowledge transfer the whole time as if it’s an org that can afford the sudden loss of a single person, they also likely don’t have good documentation

Given the recent round of layoffs when employee access was terminated overnight with no warning or conversation, I think employees should treat the employers the same. Now, I am not saying you just stop showing up one fine day but I am merely saying that I would give my notice, do my 2 weeks and leave. I wont spend time writing any docs for knowledge transfer (been there done that and honestly no one cared) but I will try to wrap up stuff I was working on only because I usually care about what I do.

At my last job I gave a month to upper management and two weeks for those that I was supervising. This let management come up with a plan on how to reshuffle roles to fill the gap. I also created a transition document listing my responsibilities, suggested surrogates, and current statuses of projects I was managing and involved in. Why did I do that? Not really to get something out of it in the future, but because I didn’t want to leave a mess for my coworkers.

A transition document seems reasonable. Anything more would be straight up people pleasing.

The most important thing is not to give a lot of notice when you quit, or to give a crap about how much notice you give them at all. It's when. If at all possible, you should give notice at or slightly beyond the first of the month. That way, when you leave, you will most likely retain your benefits through the rest of the month.

If your last day is say, the 28th, and you don't start a new job til the 2nd, then you're gonna be without benefits for the entire month.

Totally dumb advice. I've tried to be the good guy several times and give my current employer a month of my time to crunch and write docs or whatever. It's usually stressful and doesn't make a huge impact in the end. Better to just offer 2 weeks and move to new role as fast as you can. Your new employer usually wants you to start ASAP, and they are what matters now that you already made the choice to move on.

I was expecting the comment section to be negative about this, but not nearly unanimously so. I'll be contrary and say that in my last two jobs as a senior software eng, I've given six weeks notice and it's worked out very nicely.

I was not just shown the door immediately, I got a chance to get closure on some projects, and have a number of knowledge dump sessions that I hope were helpful to people. I think my collaborators appreciated the longer notice, but of course it's difficult to say.

The way I did it was to give my manager six weeks notice, then tell my close collaborators at four weeks, most everyone else I worked with at two weeks and then sent a "this is my last week" email. Still, six weeks seems like an outer edge to me—I can't think of any good reason to give three months notice.

The primary downside is that it is not really compatible with taking time off between jobs. Most places are reluctant to give you an offer for a start date more than a month out.

"I'll give my future company a month or two to rescind their offer."

horrendous advice.

This only works if you’re a bro who is chummy with leadership. Honestly this is one of the worst pieces of advice for a marginalized person. If you show any indication of leaving as a marginalized person you are extremely likely to be pegged as “a flight risk” or “unstable” or “frantic” and your job will likely be eliminated before you actually are ready to roll.

In the U.S. this likely means losing your healthcare and missing your children’s tuition payments — and even your housing. Your visa if you’re immigrating, etc.

The only people who have enough psychological security to do this are the ones who don’t actually depend on their jobs for maintaining their current standard of living.

In a perfect world this would be great advice for everyone, however given the political and economic culture of the U.S. this is pretty horrible advice for a marginalized person. Our labor laws don’t support this behavior for a reason — and if “push comes to shove” every corporation in Silicon Valley will air on the side of modern labor laws (or lack there of).

Don't know about US, but I don't think anyone can actually force you to come to work after youve given notice. The most they can do in UK is not pay you for the notice period. And since the only reference they can later give you is "they worked here", working through your notice period is kinda optional.

As an employer, the flipside of this is that there needs to be some value in having someone there that you know is leaving. If someone has been halfway checked out because they've been interviewing elsewhere, it might not be worth keeping them around for six weeks. They can't start any long-running work, or anything with any dependencies, and many people's work quality drops significantly after putting in their notice.

It's a nice idea, for sure; but most jobs can be transitioned in 2 weeks. Anything longer than that and all sense of urgency is lost ("We can transition that in a month", etc).

I've quit both ways -- with a long notice period and a short one, and short notice periods are the only times that there's been an actual transition plan.

My goal is to ensure that the company is in a position to carry on with as little disruption as possible.

I've always given at least the (US standard) two weeks, and usually three, but much longer than that can be counterproductive because one can become entrenched in current projects instead of wrapping things up and transitioning them to others.

Even when I've been at the same company for many years and have been involved in a lot of projects, this never took more than two weeks because throughout my tenure I do my best to document things, cross-train my co-workers, and ensure that others could take over for me if needed. That last two weeks is usually just a matter of making sure that all my documentation is up-to-date and that people remember what I've taught them.

Bad advice. I've seen people give notice way in advance, being terminated on the spot.

How long of a notice period is considered reasonable probably varies drastically between different countries, different industries, etc. So the advice should largely be just do what is the norm in your environment to avoid burning bridges.

I have only worked for FAANGs and other big pre-IPO startups in the west coast for the past 15 years. I have quit like 5 times now and I have always offered only a 2 weeks notice. That is considered normal in these places. I have never burned bridges (I have gone back to work for the same company with the same people even).

There's no Field in the global Google doc Who To Hire for "they were nice and gave a lot of notice before quitting"

but I can see how giving a lot of notice will make your manager happy, and could lead to a job lead later in your career. It happened to me.

This depends upon your situation in your work.

But if you feel your managers and company have been good to you or even neutral, then I fully agree with this. Plus it keeps options open for you since things go sideways in your new position.

It's interesting to me to read through this thread and see the stark differences between the US & Europe.

Work culture in the US is pretty awful. It truly is every-man-for-themselves, and I find it deeply saddening.

Will a company give you notice when they fire you? Especially if it's a toxic company? No.

You don't reciprocate (as long as you're okay with burning some bridges - which should be fine with above criteria).

Even though I know OP lives in US: in Europe you get written down the notice period on your contract. If you decide to quit or if your company decides to fire you, both parties have to honor the notice period (usually between 1-3 months).

I personally am okay with the American model tbf.

When I want to quit immediately, I don't want to stay miserable in the same job for 1-3 months. 3 months would be insane for me. As long as it works both ways (I can quit whenever, and you can fire me whenever) - it's fine.

Acceptable. Preferred even.

They'll often pay severance, which is the part of the job the employee materially benefits from.

While giving notice is polite, it's important to note that it is just a courtesy in most places, and you're providing that courtesy to something that will happily fire you with no notice if it benefits them. If you're somewhere an employer can treat you as having quit the day you provide notice, then you should give minimal notice to maximize stock vesting, benefits, etc.

So you don't need to provide "more notice (a lot more notice)" as the benefits listed just aren't real. I've replaced bullet points with numbers for ease of reference:

    1. Do only the parts of your job you enjoy the most
    2. Eliminate ~all stress from your job
    3. Get paid the same
    4. Extend your benefits for longer
    5. Take unused vacation time
    6. Vest more stock
    7. Get your bonus
    8. Leave on a positive note
    9. Be thanked and appreciated by everyone

Of these the only a few are unequivocally true, and most are just false or unnecessary, or even contradictory. The true ones are (3), (4), and (6), and only if you live in a place where an employer is not permitted to terminate your employment upon notice.

Your primary goal in providing this courtesy is (8) leaving on a positive note, but if you're trying to do that then (1) and (2) are out. You're employed, you have to do your job, and if you shirk that then you're not leaving on a positive note. At the same time if you've announced you're leaving the company has no reason to continue being nice/trying to keep you.

So we're down to (5), (7), and (9). In most countries (5) is some variation of "earned income", that is you've earned that money and they have to pay you out when your employment class. In many countries sick leave is also earned income and must also be paid out. Hence (5) is unnecessary. If you aren't in such a state or country, then you're beholden to "can I be terminated immediately upon notice", in which case you're better off going on vacation, and then handing in notice.

(7) isn't going to happen once you hand in your notice. Either you've already been awarded your bonus, in which case they can't claw it back, or there's no reason for them to give you one - you've given notice so giving you a bonus isn't going to benefit them.

Finally for (9), you don't need more than 2 weeks notice. You don't really even need a week for that. This particular point feels like it's part of the "your job is your family" nonsense that is routinely exploited by employers.

There is no benefit to extended notice unless you're trying to ensure that (8) will leave you the option to return or work for the same group of people elsewhere in future.

Another point, this person has what to me is inverted priorities: they say give more notice to a bigger company than a small one. If you are leaving a company, the impact of missing an employee is inversely proportional to the size of the company.

If you quit a company, which company will find the missing employee harder: the one with 10 thousand employees, or the one with 10? Who will be more impacted by losing and engineer or artist, EA or some indie gamedev?

>In most countries (5) is some variation of "earned income", that is you've earned that money and they have to pay you out when your employment ceases. In many countries sick leave is also earned income and must also be paid out. Hence (5) is unnecessary.

Yes, but if they let you have a "last working day" and then take vacation, you're getting both your salary and your benefits (like healthcare) for that time. Depending on the circumstances--i.e. retiring or taking time off between jobs anyway--this may be the better deal. Even if they say no, you still get the money.

That's (4) I think -- extending benefits, rather than being needed to get your vacation time. It falls into where I said "you're better off going on vacation, and then handing in notice". Handing in notice pre-vacation gives them the opportunity to say "well you're resigning anyway so today is your last day" in many jurisdictions, or simply inviting pettiness: a boss just refuses to approve your vacation request after you hand in notice - it doesn't save them money to refuse it, it's just being petty.

The whole point of the article is that you benefit from giving lots of notice, but that's just not true. Say you want to quit in 8 weeks, you could give 8 weeks notice today, or you could give 2 weeks notice in 6 weeks. In both cases you get employee benefits for the same amount of time, you have the same opportunity to use vacation time, etc. But in the former case you also have the option in many places for them to just say "ok, today is your last day" - I _think_ in less anti-worker areas such a dismissal would not be valid (e.g. the company can stop you entering the premises, but would have to consider you still employed, _or_ they would have to report you as being terminated rather than resigning which has legal implications for them), but even then you aren't getting any real benefit from the early notice.

Honestly the only people who gain anything from you giving advanced notice is your employer, and these are the same employers who can (and do) fire you essentially without notice.

Skimming this article, it seems to say giving a lot of notice is really good for your current manager, but maybe not so good for your next job.

So, does it explain why I would want it, and not my manager?

When you've been laid off, how much notice did your employer give you?

For me, it was:

- accounts locked moments before the layoff announcement.

- kept on payroll until the next month, so we'd get another month of benefits

- given about 6.5 weeks of severance

- allowed to keep my computer

It was really nice of them.

My only sadness is that there was no chance to say goodbyes, which sucked because we had a wonderful team. I finally realized this downside of team building.

Yeah, how about no?

My employer behaves exactly as it's laid out in my contract. I will behave exactly as it's laid out in the contract. If it says 2 weeks, that means 2 weeks, not one day late or early.

2 weeks in the US is commonly a customary thing as opposed to anything contractual.

I’ve quit all jobs with 1-2 months notice and can wholeheartedly agree with the author’s narrative. I am still on good terms with my ex-managers and colleagues.

There’s another plus to this: when your ex-manager moves to another company and starts hiring there, they’d likely want you again.

On the vacation before your last day bit: labor law in most places dictates that employers must reimburse you for any unused vacation days. Unless there’s an “unlimited” vacation policy, which typically caps this at 2 weeks, less any vacation days you take.

One time I even got offered a “bonus” for staying on longer than the notice period. I got to focus on the things that excited me and piece were generally nice. Another time they threw me an expensive send-off - I saw the CEO sign a $800 bill for the ~6/7 of us (a decade ago when the world wasn’t so expensive). Goes to prove the author’s point about this being a win-win.

Of course - you probably shouldn’t do this if your boss is a dick and your mental health is at stake. Give this courtesy to those you can see yourself reaching out to in times of need.

This comment section is nuts. Obviously don’t jeopardize an offer by trying to push your exit back. Duh.

But if you are already quitting, and you’re not immediately starting another job, why not extend your departure date? Best case they send you home day 1 but respect your effective date. Worst case they send you home day 1 and stop paying you immediately. So if you push it out maybe you get a few extra paychecks. And if not, hey, you were already quitting. Who cares?

Maybe, I’m quitting for a reason more than just money.

Sure but everything being discussed presupposes you don’t hate your job.

I had a great relationship with one of my previous companies, my boss, and team. I gave them about 8 weeks notice. It was certainly appreciated. There was no reason to blindside them, nor were they going to can me early for putting in my notice.

I know plenty of people may do this and it not be appreciated, and that just might happen. I think it's good to at least consider if you have a fairly transparent relationship with your boss.

I gave two or three months notice once to finish up a project. Never again. As soon as you announce that you’re leaving everyone (rightly) treats you as if you shouldn’t be there.

Bloomberg’s policy is that your last day is the day you give notice. You know it going in and it works really well. Get people to document as they go so there’s no need for much of a handoff at the end.

Real Career advice: Do NOT give any indication of leaving to anyone until all your digital stuff is backed up offsite and you know where all your physical things are located.

Maybe like the writer, you work for some unicorn with nice and generally well meaning people. They might let you do this. It's more than likely however that your two week notice will be immediate termination.

Physical stuff makes sense but almost all “digital stuff” belongs to the company. What’s missing from your list is making sure that you’ve moved any accounts, mailing lists, certs etc to your personal email.

I feel this advice ignores the most common scenarios in which one would need to give notice in the first place.

If you want to a make a move, you interview, see if you get the position, then give notice. You're not going to want to give notice before you know you get the position, and if you do get it, you're new future employer is unlikely to want to wait months.

>> How Much Notice Can You Give? >> It depends on a lot of things:

The list misses what's most important for me: depends on how good am I feeling at the company, or I appreciate its people. Then, I want to make it also easier to transfer knowledge or help them finish things that were dependent on me, etc. Especially on project management.

I agree entirely.

It's rare that I've ever given less than a month's notice when leaving a position. My instinct is to give as much notice as I possibly can. In part because it's just professional, and in part because I'm still a part of the team until I leave, and giving the maximal amount of notice is in the team's best interest.

I actually regret spending a lot of time documenting the system and fixing critical bugs before leaving one of my jobs. The owner was a jerk and ended up screwing us over on final pay. If I hadn't been so professional, the system would have failed within a few weeks and he would have paid dearly for us to fix it.

Companies will drop you in a moment like a freshly pooped turd into a toilet bowl. Give them MORE notice?!?! Lol GTFO.

Never thought about it this way, but makes a lot of sense. I gave 4 weeks notice one time because I had an especially large amount of knowledge-transfer to do, and it worked out about like described. And the "fun"/QOL aspects probably are reproducible at the right companies, now that I think about it

Coming from EU, one month notice both ways is the norm (a lot of people get hired on temporary contracts 6/12 months before becoming full time employees)

Only once I've given ~ 3 months notice simply because I didn't think I was a good fit in the company long term and I didn't have anything lined up yet.

Hell no. The startup I was working for fired me on a Friday, no notice, effective immediately. We had a team meeting the previous week about how macro environment was tough but everything was fine.

I'm so done bending over backwards to satisfy rich people who will dump me as soon as things get slightly bad.

I disagree, often times for myself and many others I know they just walk you out the door that day, or in a few days, they rarely let you leave on your terms. This advice assumes your employer will act honorably, many, err most, dont.

Sounds very navie.

Many companies walk you out the door the moment you give notice. If anything you should give at MOST 2 weeks notice.

Nothing bad happens if you only give 1 week, or even if you just walk out.

Remember, they reserve the right to terminate you without cause at any time.

US corporate culture is such a horrifying shit show...

Where is live, 3 months notice from both sides is a typical contract clause, and walking people who resign out of the door is unheard of.

To be fair, tech wages are much higher here. You can make 200k a year as an IC which is unheard of in Europe

Narrow perspective. What about all the other non-tech jobs?

Unemployment tends to be lower here than in say France. Don't get me wrong, it's not the best system here in the states ( mainly since healthcare is tied to your job), but it has its upsides .

Nope. If you give a lot of notice before quitting "permanent employment" they will walk you out immediately.

It's OK to give a few hints you will not renew a contract as long as you are clear that you still like them and plan to be friends.

Some firms will walk you out immediately, but many won’t. Hopefully you know which kind you are working for.

What? The company gets 100% of the benefit. Chances are, if you’re leaving a company, you want to leave, and if you’re starting a new job, you want to start it. Why would you want to delay that any more than necessary?

I'd say, don't tell HR anything, and only tell your manager if you have a great relationship with them, and tell them only that you're _thinking_ about leaving so they have plausible deniability.

The main issue is that even if you give them two weeks or more notice, they can let you go effective immediately leading to lost income. Depending on the company, giving no notice may actually be the better approach.

This is such bad advice. My last career move I 2Xed my income. This guy is advising me to lose thousands of dollars so I can be more well liked at my previous company and stick around for longer? Cmon.

some of these reasons are quite contrary to my experience:

   Do only the parts of your job you enjoy the most

Being asked to create documents, tutorials and presentations on all aspects of your job, and endless handoff meeting is pretty much the least enjoyable.

   Take unused vacation time

wait, giving notice and then scheduling vacation during your notice period?! I think that would be poorly received and raise a lot of eyebrows

Key part of the headline is "advice no one gave me." Yeah, because it's bad advice! Even for the usual management propaganda on HN this is obviously on its face bad.

Would the company give you a lot of notice if they decided to eliminate your role? If so, extend them the same courtesy, if you can. Chances are, most companies wouldn't.

The rule of thumb is expect to be off-boarded the minute you give notice. ie. don't expect that if you give X days of notice that you'll be working those X days.

I've given a small e-commerce company 1 year notice. It was the best year of my professional life.

I've given 2 weeks notice at a large corporate, they showed me the door next day.

Giving advanced notice has backfired every.single.time

In academia, how long one takes to move is a function of seniority.

Months at the junior level, but famous scientists moving can take years.

The one time I tried to do this my employer would no longer approved vacation requests and refused to pay out my 3 weeks of unused vacation.

> and refused to pay out my 3 weeks of unused vacation

That is overtly illegal in most/all of the US. Accrued vacation is like money, it is already yours. It's why so many companies have now switched to unlimited vacation, to get that liability off the books. The icing on the cake being that most people end up taking less vacation, not more, when you remove the limit.

It is in fact legal in many states. Only 20 require it to be paid out, there are states besides California.

It is not your job to put yourself out there in order to finally get your company to do the shit they should have been doing all along.

I think you need to feel out the culture of the company and how knowledge transfer would work out to determine how much notice to give.

They ask me that in the interview when they ask where do you see your self in 5 years. I say “not here” and everybody laughs

> 2 weeks notice is the gold standard

In the US...

In most of the rest of the world 1 to 3 months is normal and expected.

2 weeks imperial is 2 months metric and that’s why we do it this way in the US.

When they notice I'm gone they've had all the notice they're gonna get.

It's weird, in India, most companies have 2 month notice periods. Many have 3.

ive always given 4 weeks, and would work up to the last day, usually documenting some processes/workflow for the next guy to come along. Last time i actually felt compelled to annotate a video showing my workflow.

Or, you can give two weeks notice, and then be fired for quitting.

I tried that, the boss thought it was a negotiating tactic.

Sure, give lots of notice but be prepared to be walked out.

This is lovely sounding advice until you get burned by it.

A note on the last paragraph about being a “lazy engineer”: this shouldn’t be a factor. Being lazy is subjective and the same engineer can be seen differently depending on the management, team, moment, etc.

here in Norway the standard is 2 weeks in the first 6 months of employment, after that: 3 months.

this goes both ways - for quitting and firing.

Bootlicker

This is awful advice.

3 month notice, lol wtf.

I think this mostly depends on the then current employee market situation.

Big fan of advice like this.

Lets assume you gave notice because you're moving to a new job. I have a hard time imagining a scenario where your new employer would be OK with a multi-month delay to your start.

Contrary to some opinions here, I think this is very good advice.

I am always giving as much notice as I can. And also try to finish my projects and accommodate my employer/client as much as I can at the end of the project.

Regardless how unprofessionally they may act, I resolve to always act professionally myself.

I think it is more about the attitude rather than simple cost/benefit calculation.

But even if you are just looking at cost/benefit, after two decades of doing this I am finally seeing people noticing and coming back to me. I have my past bosses bringing new work to me, I have my colleagues spreading information about me by word of mouth. I have CEOs of unknown companies reach out to me because they learned about me from somebody who worked with me in the past.

Maybe you will not get noticed when you are junior level but when you get a bit more exposed position it starts becoming more and more important.

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